Catalogue-2014-Jean-Luc-Baroni

Jean-Luc Baroni

Lucian Freud: A Walk to the Office (no. 55 ), actual size

Jean-Luc Baroni
Paintings
Sculptures
Drawings
2014

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am very grateful to Alexandra Chaldecott and Joanna Watson for their dedication in researching and
writing this catalogue.
Christopher Apostle, Francesca Baldassari, Jean-Marc Baroni, my son Pietro Baroni, Antonio Berni,
Giuseppe Bertini, Anna Bozena Kowalczyk, Christina Buley-Uribe, Suzanna Caviglia, Hugo Chapman,
Martin Clayton, Pierre Etienne, Chris Fischer, Saverio Fontini, Daniel Greiner, Neil Jeffares, Paul
Joannides, Mattia Jona, Annemarie Jordan Gschwend, Neil Jeffares, William Jordan, Francesco Leone,
Laurie and Emmanuel Marty de Cambiaire, Laetitia Masson, Alessandro Morandotti, Ekaterina Orekhova,
Anna Ottani Cavina, Francesco Petrucci, Anna Reynolds, Aileen Ribeiro, Jane Roberts, Clare Robertson,
Cristiana Romalli, Annalisa Scarpa, Paul Taylor and the Warburg Institute, Cinzia Virno, Emanuele Volpi,
Joanna Woodall, Selina Woodruff-Van der Geest, Tiziana Zennaro.
Last but not least, I am also very grateful to my wife Cristina for her unrelenting patience and for her
continued help and support.
Jean-Luc Baroni
All enquiries should be addressed to Jean-Luc Baroni at Jean-Luc Baroni Ltd., 7/8 Mason’s Yard, Duke
Street, St. James’s, London, SW1Y 6BU.
Tel: +44 (20) 7930-5347
e-mail: jlbaroni@jlbaroni.com
© Copyright Jean-Luc Baroni Ltd., 2014
Designed by Saverio Fontini - Printed in Italy by Viol’Art – Florence – email: info@violart.firenze.it
44

Paintings
5

Master of The Female Half-Lengths
Antwerp, first half of the 16 th Century
1
The Virgin and Child
Oil on panel.
38 x 30 cms. (15 x 11 ¾ in).
This beautifully preserved panel painting is an exceptional example of the work of an artist or workshop
so far not precisely identified but clearly recognisable on the basis of style and quality. Other examples
can be seen in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, the Metropolitan Museum, New York, the National
Gallery, London, the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam and the Art Institute, Chicago, amongst other collections.
Max Friedlander, the historian of Netherlandish Art, believed the artist or artists to have been active in
Antwerp or possibly Mechelen during the 1520s and 1530s; he analysed the figure style as being close
to Bernart van Orley and where there are landscapes, likened them to Joachim Patinier’s 1 . More recently,
the similarity has been noted with the works given to Ambrosius Benson, who is sometimes thought to
have had workshops in two different cities, Antwerp and Bruges and who equally had a successful career
producing refined panels on a domestic scale. The nomenclature is based on a specific group of panels
depicting aristocratic ladies in half-length scenes, often interiors, reading, writing or playing musical
instruments, while others shown with a jar, the attribute of Mary Magdalen. The present picture belongs
to a group of representations of the Virgin and Child, some as here, focused entirely on the figures and
others in broader, landscape settings. The artist shows great delicacy in the treatment of drapery and hair;
here the voluminous folds of the red robe contrast with the minute and subtle detailing of the veil on the
Virgin’s head and the border of fur at her neck, while rolling waves of hair flow over her shoulder towards
the almost luminescent pallor of the Christ Child’s short curls and alabaster skin. Echoes and borrowings
from other Netherlandish artists have been frequently noted and in the case of the Virgin and Child
compositions, the inspiration often comes from Rogier van der Weyden. These references are deliberately
sophisticated underlining the cultivated atmosphere of the paintings coming from this studio.
Friedlander considered the so-called Master of the Female Half-Lengths to be one of the most successful
of the generation working alongside the “giants” such as Quentin Massys and Joos van Cleve. He
remarks, however, upon the total absence of clues to aid identification of the hand, neither signatures
nor monograms, inscriptions nor recorded commissions, although the Madonnas have a trademark in the
small round metal or gold button which secures the Virgin’s robe, as here. It would appear that much of
the work - around one hundred paintings have been attributed to this workshop - was sent to Spain for
the hungry market there 2 and given the relatively small scale of the panels and their refinement it may be
presumed that they were made particularly for secular collectors and patrons of the arts.
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2
Alonso Sanchez Coello
Valencia 1531-1588 Madrid
Portrait of a Young Noblewoman wearing Fine Jewels and a Black Dress with Gold
Embroidery in the form of Wheatsheaves and a High White Ruff Collar.
Oil on panel.
35.2 x 25.3 cms. (13 ¾ x 10 in.)
Provenance: The Farnese Collection of the Dukes of Parma and Piacenza, the panel bears the wax
seal of Ranuccio II Farnese (1630-1694) and four inventory numbers, one in red wax: I55, the second
in grey-white oil: 472, a third in black: LB #43 and the fourth: 265 in thinner black. Recorded in the
circa 1680 inventory of the Farnese collections in the Palazzo del Giardino in Parma as being in the
“Camera di Venere del Cantone”: Un quadro alto oncie otto, largo oncie cinque e tre quarti in tavola.
Una testa di donna giovine con ornato di gioie e perle, frappa al collo, vestita di nero con ricamo, di
Mano Fiamenga n.155 1 . Private collection, France, M. Pontremoli (according to a label on the back
of the old frame), possibly Emanuel Pontremoli, (1865-1956), French architect and archeologist and
director of the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts, married to Suzanne Hecht).
Born near Valencia, Sánchez Coello was educated in Portugal under the care of his grandfather who
worked in the service of King Joao III. At the age of about twenty, having attracted the attention of the
King, he was sent to Flanders to train in the studio of Anthonis Mor. He returned to Portugal in 1552, with
Mor, when the latter was commissioned by Charles V to paint the various members of the Portuguese
Royal family. Sánchez Coello stayed on in Lisbon after Mor’s departure working for the court until, in
1555, he moved to the old Castillan capital, Valladolid, in the service of Juana (1535-1573), sister to
Philip II and widow of Joao, son and heir of Joao III, who had died after falling off his horse in 1554). In
1551, Charles V had decreed the succession, passing the Habsburg monarchy to his brother Ferdinand
and the Spanish throne to his son Philip II. Infanta Juana was made Regent of Spain by Philip II when he
left to marry Mary Tudor in 1554, with whom he reigned jointly in England until her death in 1558. After
Philip II returned and when Mor left Spain definitively in 1560, Sánchez Coello took his place as Court
Painter, Pintor de Cámera, as recommended by the Infanta Juana. He followed the King from Toledo to
Madrid, which he, Philip, was in the process of permanently establishing as the Spanish capital. Sánchez
Coello lived in the Casa del Tesoro and enjoyed status and favour, as well as a considerable fortune.
Philip II became godfather to two of his children and granted him a position and influence greater than
that of any other contemporary artist. As well as being a portrait painter, he was responsible for many
of the numerous religious paintings commissioned by the King for the various new Royal palaces and
churches. Interestingly, as Jonathan Brown has pointed out, his religious work sometimes lacks “the
immediacy and incisiveness of his images of individual persons…” but in his altarpieces for the basilica
of the Escorial, he effected a “remarkable synthesis between the divine and the human” by appearing to
use real or at least very naturalistic men for his saints clothed in rich vestments, “a striking departure” and
one that would be “an inspiration to the next generation of Spanish artists” 2 . Philip II was an avid patron
of the arts, who like his father had depended upon Mor for representations of himself and his family but
had also adopted Titian as a form of Court painter abroad. Sánchez Coello easily inherited Mor’s mantle
and brought his own distinctive qualities to royal portraiture. Coello studied the works of Titian, which he
encountered in the collections of both Charles V and Philip II, and while his precision of technique and
exceptional skill at representing faces, cloth and jewels came initially from Mor, he himself developed
a greater realism and an intensity of colour, in part through appreciation of the Venetian master. As
Alfonso E. Pérez Sánchez described, Sánchez Coello’s style is a “synthesis of the objectivity of the Flemish
tradition .. with the sensuality of Venetian painting..” 3
This refined and beautifully preserved portrait of a young woman in full court dress belongs to the central
period in Sánchez Coello’s career, when he was entirely active as painter for the Portuguese and Spanish
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Royal families. This dating is borne out by the details of the costume. The high lace ruff, tight collar and
richly embroidered black dress compare very closely with the costumes worn by other court figures
painted by Coello during this time; for example, the 1571 portrait of Anna of Austria (1549-1580), niece
and fourth wife of Philip II, in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna and the portrait in the Prado of
Isabel de Valois (1546-1568), also known as Elizabeth, daughter of Henry II and Catherine de Medici
and Philip II’s third wife. Interestingly the faces of both these sitters are given a high colour, as in the
present work, which was a feature of the Spanish court fashion for women of that period, the use of rouge
on cheeks and lips, being thought a homage to the Virgin Mary 5 . The sitter’s lavish jewellry, composed
of groups of pearls and single, faceted precious stones in elaborate gold settings, as well the delicate
headdress which combines precious stones and seed pearls with filigree gold mimicking hair, underline
her status. The jewelled collar and necklace are parallel in sumptuousness and extremely close in design
to those worn by queens and princesses of the Portuguese and Spanish court, see for example, the portrait
of Infanta Juana by Anthonius Mor, prior to her being widowed, now in the Musée Royal des Beaux-Arts
in Brussels, or the double portrait of the Princesses Isabel Clara Eugenia and Catalina Micaela (daughters
of Philip II and Isabel de Valois) in the Royal Collection, London, dated to around 1571 6 . In terms of
quality and style, the present portrait is particularly similar to two portraits by Sánchez Coello also in the
Royal Collection at Buckingham Palace (previously listed as being at Hampton Court) of the Habsburg
Archdukes Rudolph and Ernest of 1567, described by Alfonso Perez Sánchez in his list of notable works
as “the two intense, half-length portraits .. both dated 1564”. 7
Professor Giuseppe Bertini, who has published extensive studies of the Farnese collections, has kindly
identified the present work in an inventory of circa 1680 as one of the pictures in the Camera di Venere
del Cantone of the Palazzo del Giardino in Parma: the no. 155, written in red wax on the back of the
panel is described in the inventory as “Un quadro alto oncie otto, largo oncie cinque e tre quarti in
tavola. Una testa di donna giovine con ornato di gioie e perle, frappa al collo, vestita di nero con ricamo,
di Mano Fiamenga no.155” 8 . These measurements when converted from the Parmese to the metric scale,
correspond exactly to those of the present painting. As Bertini notes, it is not surprising that the identity
of the young woman was unknown by the authors of the Farnese inventory; indeed a portrait of Charles
V, now amongst the Farnese paintings in the Museo di Capodimonte, Naples, which hung in the same
room and is of a similar scale, is described as “ritratto d’un giovane con berretta nera in capo, tosone
al collo”. While noting that it has not been possible to connect the remaining numbers on the back of
the panel to other inventories, Professor Bertini confirms that the number 472 written in white paint is
consistent with the numbering on the back of Correggio’s Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine, which also
hung in the Palazzo Giardino and is now in the Museo di Capodimonte 9 , while the letters LB followed by
a number are found again on several other paintings in Naples and perhaps correspond to the initials of
one of the curators of the Farnese collection 10 . Bertini further notes that in the course of the 17th century,
the Palazzo del Giardino in Parma was where Ranuccio II exhibited his best paintings from the family
collections 11 .
It has not been possible either to determine in what circumstances the present portrait left the Farnese
collection. The majority of the works belonging to the Farnese are now in Capodimonte, the Palazzo
Reale also in Naples, or the Galleria Nazionale in Parma. For a number of paintings, however, some of
which have wax seals and numbering similar to the present work, it has been possible to document the
moment in which they left the collection. Certain paintings were sold from the collection by Francesco,
the son of Ranuccio II, to raise funds to buy other works, such as the four panels by Jacopo Bertoia now
in the Christ Church Picture Gallery, Oxford. 12 In 1735, the Bourbon King, Charles III, son of Philip V
and his second wife, Elizabeth Farnese, transferred to Naples a considerable part of his inheritance of
the Farnese collections in order to decorate his new palaces. Following the sack by French troops of the
Palazzo di Capodimonte in 1799, a substantial number of paintings came on to the market, many of which
entered important English collections 13 . Of the paintings which were not transferred to Naples a number
remained in the Palazzo Ducale 14 in Parma and some of these were sold during the Napoleonic period
(Parma was formally annexed to the French Empire in 1808). The present work was discovered in France.
10

It had a late 19th century carved and gilded frame, which bore a cartouche inscribed in Gothic lettering:
“1510 F. Clouet dit Jehannes 1572 Clouet”. This more recent provenance suggests that the picture may
indeed have left the Italian Peninsula during Napoleonic times, thereafter entering collections in France,
where at some point it was part of an unidentified exhibition, loaned from the Pontremoli collection and
transported by the French company, Chenue (according to labels on the old frame).
Although clearly a depiction of a member of a royal household and despite its fascinating provenance,
the identity of this young woman remains tantalizingly unresolved. The Farnese family had extremely
strong links with the court of Spain; Margaret of Parma, illegitimate daughter of Charles V, married
Ottavio Farnese and their son Alessandro Farnese (1545-1592) was brought up in Spain and in 1565
married the Portuguese princess, Maria d’Aviz (1538-1577), daughter of Prince Eduardo d’Aviz (brother
of Jaoa III) and his cousin, Isabella de Braganza. Their lavish wedding took place in Brussels, according to
the wishes of Filippo II and after long negotiations in Madrid. Identifying the sitter as Maria d’Aviz works
well with the Farnese provenance, and with the presence of Sánchez Coello in Portugal and Madrid
but Maria d’Aviz was 27 at the time of her marriage and the sitter is considerably younger. The painting
would therefore need to have been painted in the period from 1552 to 1555, when Sánchez Coello
was in Lisbon, painting members of the Portuguese royal family, and perhaps sent later to the Farnese
court at the time when marriage negotiations began. For this dating, a stylistic comparison may be made
with the painting on panel in the Belgian Embassy in Madrid generally accepted as by Sánchez Coello
and recently identified as a likeness of Juana de Portugal of 1553 15 . The only two securely identified
depictions of Maria d’Aviz, versions of the same image, both of which are in Parma, show a somewhat
harsher looking face, considerably older, more elongated, with larger features, thinner, arched eyebrows
and a more accentuated nose 16 . There is however a significant resemblance between the young woman
in the present portrait and a painting in the Prado now definitively identified by Annemarie Jordan as
being of the widowed Isabella di Braganza, mother of Maria d’Aviz 17 .
That the portrait was intended as a nuptial image seems extremely likely. As suggested by Annemarie
Jordan, the style of hair is that of an unmarried woman and the ears of wheat embroidered on her dress
are most probably emblems of fertility while the tiny silver branches, can be regarded as symbols of
strength and virtue. The painting is highly realistic, each eyelash delineated, the shading soft around the
mouth and nose suggesting a slight down above her upper lip and her dark eyebrows and pale chestnut
hair are unusual and striking. It is most clearly a painting taken from life 18 and it is worth noting that no
other version of the likeness has so far been found. This is not the case for many of the other portraits of
Spanish, Portuguese and Habsburg royalty, which exist, in some cases, in numerous examples, both as
autograph works by the original artist, be that Mor or Sánchez Coello or Sophonisba Anguissola (who
joined the court of Philip II as painter and lady-in-waiting to his wife Elizabeth de Valois) or copies
by members of their workshops. As noted by Pérez Sánchez, comparatively few of Sánchez Coello’s
paintings have survived although there is abundant documentation concerning the many works paid for
by the King and portraits by him of people unconnected to the court are rarer still.
We are extremely grateful to Annemarie Jordan Gschwend, Professor Clare Robertson, Professor Giuseppe
Bertini, Bill Jordan, Professor Joanna Woodall, Aileen Ribeiro, Lucy Whitaker and Anna Reynolds for their
generous assistance with this note.
11

3
Fede Galizia and Nunzio Galizia
The former Milan 1578-1630 and the latter documented in Milan between 1573 and 1610
A Double Portrait of Jacopo Menochio and Margherita Candiani, within an elaborate Trompe
L’œil Frame, decorated with the figures of Justice and Prudence.
The oval portraits, oil on copper, 10 x 8 cms. (4 x 3¼ in.), inserted into a walnut panel painted in brown,
black, gold and silver oil.
The panel: 25.5 x 31.3 cms. (10 x 12 3 /8 in.)
Provenance: Alberigo XII D’Este (1725-1813), Principe di Barbiano e di Belgioioso (bears his label with
crest on the the back of the panel); Private Collection.
Literature: Alessandro Morandotti, Inventare in famiglia. Un pezzo di bravura nella Milano di Federico
Borromeo, in “Nuovi Studi”, IX-X, 2004-5 (but 2006), 11, pp.213-224.
This work is the result of a family collaboration between Nunzio Galizia, an illuminated manuscript painter,
and versatile master in many fields of artistic production and his daughter, the painter Fede, whose work
is better known. These are artists of particular importance in Milan in the period between mannerism and
baroque when the city was under Spanish rule. A seventeenth century inscription on the back of the panel
and transcribed onto a label provides details of the sitters, the artists and the date of the work: Jacobus
I Menochius Senatus Mediolanensis / Praeses et Margarita Candiana Uxor. / Fides pinxit, cujus Nuntius
Gallitius miniatura / exornavit 1606 (fig.1). The two oval portraits were executed by Fede Galizia and the
lavishly decorated trompe l’œil frame was the work of her father Nunzio. Interestingly, the miniaturist has
taken great care to specify the different dates of execution and the ages of the sitters: Jacopo Menochio was
painted in September 1605 at the age of 74 and Margherita Candiana, in October 1606, aged 64.
The framing decoration is conceived as an aedicule, decorated with exceptional attention to detail including
putti as they tie together garlands of fruit and foliage, a coat of arms with a rampant deer and an eagle and
highly convoluted strapwork, curtains and books, all given three dimensionality by the play of light and
shade. The figures of Justice and Prudence flank the two portraits while a winged figure standing on a globe
protectively rests her hands upon the egg and dart decoration around the portraits. Above each portrait
is a small symbol finely painted in oxidised silver: above Jacopo is a crane, standing for Vigilance, as the
inscription below confirms: VIGILAT UT IUVET and above Margherita Candiani is a dog with one paw
resting on a fruit, symbol of Fidelity, over the inscription BONUM UNITATIS. On the cartouche below the
portraits is a long inscription giving extracts from the Book of Ecclesiastes (25,1) and the Psalms (90,16), again
celebrating harmony and matrimonial happiness.
All these features are highly characteristic of the late
International Mannerist style, which encompassed
influences from the School of Fontainebleau to the
work emanating from the Court of Rudolph II in
Prague and was used for many types of decorative
work such as engraved frontispieces and the
ephemera decorations for civic events. It is possible,
as is suggested by his great skill, that Nunzio
Galizia himself worked as a book illustrator as did
other important artists of the time such as Giovanni
Battista Crespi, il Cerano or Giovanni Mauro della
Rovere and indeed the engraver like technique
with which the gold paint is applied with a very
fine brush, producing the same effect as a burin
1. Verso of the walnut panel, with labels, inscriptions and
early provenance.
on an engraver’s plate, supports this hypothesis.
Nunzio Galizia’s contact with engravers is also
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documented by the existence of a print after this
portrait of Jacopo Menochio, executed in 1606
by the engraver Raphael Sadeler II.
Although in artistic treatises and chronicles
of Milan the achievements of both Fede and
Nunzio are celebrated, until the discovery
of this panel, the range of Nunzio’s work is
only detailed in a letter of 1573 in which he
describes himself as a miniaturist and requests
the privilege to produce the decoration of fans
in the Spanish style and in an etched map in
perspective of the city of Milan dated 1578 and
dedicated to Giuliano Goselini, the famous
man of letters and secretary to the governor of
Milan Ferrante Gonzaga.
Fede Galizia, Nunzio’s daughter, is now
much better known for her successful career
as a still life painter and portraitist of official
commissions. Her attention to detail, which
was learned from her father, was particularly
appreciated and it is thought that he introduced
her to many of her patrons. Works by Fede in
public collections can principally be seen in
the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, Milan, the Uffizi,
Florence and the Metropolitan Museum, New
York.
Jacopo Menochio, who was born in Pavia,
became a teacher and man of law whose skills as
a diplomat and government official culminated
in his nomination as a senator in Milan in 1592.
As early as 1565, the Duke of Savoy, Emanuele
Filiberto had given him the task of negotiating
the repossession of the territory of Monferrato,
following its annexation by the Gonzaga at
the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis in 1559. The
couple are shown in a formal style, both facing
the viewer with their heads slightly turned. The
details of their costumes are exceptionally well
described: their linen ruffs and fur-trimmed
robes are complimentary. Margherita is more
elaborate in her dress, as would be expected,
wearing a curious headdress of tiny flowers on
a chain around a lace panel which attaches at
the back of her head to a veil. Both are painted
against a purple background, Margherita’s paler
than Jacopo’s. Interestingly, this is the only
example known of a female portrait by the artist.
This note is adapted from the text kindly
supplied by Alessandro Morandotti based on
the article of 2005 in which he published this
double portrait and trompe L’œil frame.
actual size
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15

Guido Reni
Calvenzano 1575-1642 Bologna
4
The Assumption of the Virgin Mary
Oil on copper.
58 x 44.4 cms. (22 ¾ x 17 5 /8 in.)
Provenance: Sampieri Collection, Bologna, considered to have commissioned by the abbot and doctor
of law, Astorre di Vincenzo Sampieri, shortly after 1595 and recorded in the Sampieri “museo” by
Malvasia in 1678 (see below); by descent until 1811 when Marchese Francesco Sampieri sent a shipment
of pictures including the present work to Milan, where purchased for the collection of Napoleon’s
Vice-Regent, Eugène de Beauharnais, made Duke of Leuchtenberg in 1817 (see old label on verso:
Herzoglich Leuchtenberg Majorats Fideicommiss. Matrikel II.3, Inventar Nr. 154); then by descent to
Maximilian, 3 rd Duke of Leuchtenberg (Munich 1817-1852 St Petersburg), who married Grand Duchess
Maria Nikolaevna of Russia; the painting was transferred to Russia as the Leuchtenberg family moved by
degrees to St. Petersburg; recorded as being in the gallery of the Mariinsky Palace, St Petersburg, home to
Grand Duchess, Maria Nicolaevna, Duchess of Leuchtenberg (1819-1876) 1 , where Waagen inspected the
painting in 1864; by descent to either George, 5 th Duke of Leuchtenberg or his brother Nicolas; exported
from Russia in 1917 by a Dr. Nyblom and acquired by the Stockholm dealer A.R. Nordiska; exhibited
in Stockholm 1917 and then transferred to a sister company in Buenos Aires (district of Florida 101) and
exhibited there in the mid 1920s; collection of Rudolph Poeschel from 1925, and later in Munich; sale,
Berlin, Leo Messrs Spik, 12 th -13 th October 1961, lot 438, fig. 227; collection of Martin Schoenemann,
Lugano and thereafter private collection, Switzerland for at least 40 years.
Literature: Carlo Cesare Malvasia, Felsina Pittrice.
Vite de Pittori Bolognesi, Bologna 1678, 2 nd ed. 1841,
vol. 2, p. 7; catalogue of the Sampieri Galleria, Bologna,
1795, p. 19; J. D Passavant, The Leuchtenberg Gallery,
with engravings by J. N. Muxel, London 1852, fig. 81;
Gustav Friedrich Waagen, Die Gemälde Sammlung
in der Kaiserlichen Ermitage zu St. Petersburg nebst
Bemerkungen über andere dortige Kunstsammlungen,
Munich 1864, p. 379; A. B. Nordiska Kompaniet,
Leuchtenbergska Tavelsamlingen, Stockholm 1917;
K. Andrews, “An Early Guido Reni Drawing”, The
Burlington Magazine, vol. 103, 1961, p. 466, fig.
35; Stephen D. Pepper, “Guido Reni’s Early Style.
His Activity in Bologna, 1595-1601”, The Burlington
Magazine, vol. 111, no. 797, August 1969, pp. 475-
476, fig. 3, p. 473; E. Baccheschi, L’Opera completa
di Guido Reni, Milan 1971, no. 8; Stephen D. Pepper,
Guido Reni, A Complete Catalogue of His Works With
An Introductory Text, Oxford 1984, cat.3, fig.3 and
under cat.14; Keith Christiansen, “Annibale Carracci’s
Burial of Christ rediscovered”, The Burlington
Magazine, vol.141, no.1156. (July 1999), p.416.
Exhibited: Munich, the Leuchtenberg Palace; St.
Petersburg, The Mariinsky Palace (seen in 1864);
Stockholm, A.B. Nordiska Kompaniet, Leuchtenbergska
Tavel Samlingen, 1917, cat.32.
The first description of Reni’s fascinating and important
1. N. Muxel after Guido Reni, The Assumption of the
Virgin Mary, engraving.
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early copper, recently rediscovered but much recorded, is in the artist’s biography by Malvasia, published in
1678, where it is noted as an Assumption on copper, today in the considerable museum of Signori Sampieri,
listed fourth amongst a small group of early works 1 . A discussion written in 1999 by Keith Christiansen,
which tells the history of a slightly earlier painting on copper by Reni, The Dead Christ, has, however, shed
new light on the commission of the present work 2 . The Dead Christ is a copy after Annibale Carracci’s oil
on copper, which was painted for Annibale’s old friend Abate Astore di Vincenzo Sampieri. The Abate, who
had wanted a picture to send to an important person in Rome, to where Annibale was shortly to transfer (all
these details are given by Malvasia in his life of Reni 3 ), so loved Annibale’s work that he asked for a copy
to be made and sent to Rome in its place. Annibale in turn commissioned his new and already admired
pupil Reni to do this work and according to Malvasia was disgruntled to find that nothing he could add
would improve on this copy’s quality 4 . Annibale left for Rome in November 1595. Malvasia also records, in
his life of the Carracci, that the Abate Sampieri asked to Ludovico which of the two painters would prove
most successful, Guido or Albani; Ludovico replied “Guido fears God more” 5 , an answer which might have
pleased the aging Abbot who, it can safely be surmised, went on to commission from Reni this spectacular
devotional Assumption. Reni’s own devotion to the Virgin Mary was also attested to by Malvasia: in his
youth he went every Saturday to gaze with reverence on her image in Monte della Guardia 6 ) and his first
public work was the Coronation of the Virgin with Four Saints, painted in 1594-5 for the monks of the
Church of S. Bernardo in Bologna and now in the Pinacoteca Nazionale there. This was followed by the
several smaller works listed by Malvasia. The present work, which is nevertheless of considerable scale for
a copper, is Reni’s first painting to concentrate entirely on a golden and celestial heavenly realm and might
more properly be called the Virgin amongst an Angelic Assembly. Despite its early date, it already exhibits
all the perfection of technique and refined, ethereal elegance for which Guido Reni has been so admired,
both by his contemporaries and later eyes.
More than four decades before its reemergence from a private collection in Switzerland, this copper was
published by Stephen Pepper, using an image from the 1961 Berlin sale and establishing a narrative for
its distinguished provenance 7 . Discussing the evolution of Reni’s early style based on an examination of
the paintings listed chronologically by Malvasia, and comparison with related drawings, Pepper describes
the particular combination of influences visible in the copper. Noting the gesture to Calvaert, Reni’s
first teacher, in the Virgin’s idealised expression, he sees as primary amongst these influences, the two
Assumptions painted by Annibale and Agostino Carracci in the early 1590s, both now in the Pinacoteca
in Bologna. Pepper considers that there is a particularly close dialogue between Agostino and Guido’s
depictions of the figure of the Virgin but in fact Reni’s imagining of the hierarchical tiers of music-making
angels surrounding the very central but slightly-built figure of Mary has a grace and delicacy quite remote
from the more earthbound naturalism of Agostino’s world, in which the Virgin is supported by a naked and
muscular angels and gazed up at by hefty saints. Summing up ”the fluctuations of Reni’s style during his
early activity in Bologna”, Pepper notes that “following his departure from the Carracci Academy, he briefly
expanded the significance of elongated and sinuous proportions, perhaps deriving inspiration directly
from Parmigianino” 8 ; this comment seems extremely relevant here where the often profiled, increasingly
evanescent figures of the angelic host have much of Parmigianino’s grace and charm and show the greatest
similarity with the aesthetic of Ludovico Carracci, whose drawings can be particularly Parmigianinesque 9 .
One specifically naturalistic touch can nevertheless be seen, in the delightful detail of the heavenwards
Virgin Mary resting her right foot upon the head of a self-sacrificing but reasonably strong looking angel.
Most precocious for this young artist, perhaps 21 or 22 years old, and signaling the future direction of his
art, is the enameled surface and highly sophisticated interplay of colour and form, a suitably musical or
rhythmic dance of colour: echoing pinks, delicate variations of blue, porcelain clear skin tones, and a play
of highly ornate drapery folds set against the grey and rounded clouds.
Reni returned to the subject of the Virgin in Heaven repeatedly in his career, most tellingly, in relation
to the present work, for two closely comparable paintings, one on panel and the other again on copper.
The panel is in the Museo del Prado (fig.2), measures 77 x 51cms and has been dated to 1602-3 10 . The
copper is in the National Gallery in London (fig.3); it is slightly larger than the present work (66 x 48cms)
and dates from around 1607 11 . Both these later versions create compositions very similar to this first
18

2. Guido Reni, The Assumption of the Virgin,
Museo del Prado, Madrid.
3. Guido Reni, The Assumption of theVirgin, The
National Gallery, London.
depiction (although the Virgin is being crowned in both), but show Reni revisiting his decade earlier
model, with a slightly darker palette and a different range of facial types, and in the National Gallery
version, with more ample forms and variegated, two tone draperies. The earliest provenance for both
pictures is not known though the Prado version was in the Royal Collection in the Alcazar by 1666. It
may be presumed, however, by their subject and scale that these were also private commissions, again
for perfectly executed and highly devotional pictures, Reni’s first having been successfully received by
the Sampieri family, famous for the extent and quality of their collection which, displayed in the Sampieri
palace, was described by Malvasia as “a compendium of everything beautiful in painting” 12 .
For more than two hundred years, this first depiction of The Assumption of the Virgin remained in situ,
in the Sampieri palace, from 1595-6 until 1817, at which point a descendant of the Abate needed funds
and a sale was arranged to the Viceroy of Italy, Eugène de Beauharnais, Napoleon’s adopted son. In 1806,
Eugène married Princess Augusta, eldest daughter of Napoleon’s ally, Maximilian I of Bavaria and was
subsequently given the title of Duke of Leuchtenberg. On his elder brother’s death in 1835, their second
son, Maximilian Joseph, inherited the Dukedom as 3 rd Duke of Leuchtenberg, as well as the art collection,
and in July 1839 in the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, he married Grand Duchess Maria Nicolaevna eldest
daughter of Nicolas I, Tsar of Russia. Over the next five years, the Tsar built a palace for the couple opposite
the cathedral of St. Isaac, their marriage having been approved on condition that they live in Russia. The
Leuchtenberg art collection had earlier been placed on public display in Munich and catalogued and
published in French and German editions. An illustrated English edition was published in London in 1852,
with engraved copies of the paintings by the artist J. N. Muxel, the present work being figure 81 (fig.1). The
Duke and Duchess were well known for their highly cultivated taste in art and they filled the Mariinsky
Palace with their collection, a significant part of which, including the present copper, had been transferred
from the Ducal collections in Munich at various moments, the gallery finally being closed on the 3 rd Duke’s
death in 1852 13 . It was in the Mariinsky Palace that this copper was seen and again published, this time by
Gustav Friedrich Waagen in his 1864 description of the Hermitage and other collections in St. Petersburg 14 .
It is described as a masterful composition and, interestingly, considered by Waagen to be in the artist’s “later
style”, surely a misinterpretation of its precociously sophisticated technique and the jewel-like beauty of
this, Reni’s first depiction of the heavenly realm.
19

actual size detail
20

21

Lorenzo Lippi
Florence 1606-1665)
5
Moses before the Pharaoh turning the Water of the River Nile into Blood
Oil on canvas.
127.6 x 186.7 cms. (50 ¼ x 73 ¾)
Provenance: The Late John Appleby, Jersey, Channel Islands.
Literature: C.d’Afflitto. Lorenzo Lippi, Florence 2002, pp.146-7, 149 and 294, cat.120, illustrated (as
Biblical Scene); F. Baldassari, La Pittura del Seicento a Firenze, Indice degli artisti e delle loro opere,
Turin, 2009, pp.451 and 461, fig.244; G. Cantelli, Repertorio della pittura fiorentina del Seicento
Aggiornamento, vol.I, Pontedera 2009, p.124 (as Biblical Scene); S. Bellesi, Catalogo dei pittori fiorentini
del ‘600 e ‘700. Biographie e opere, vol.I, Florence 2009, p.181, (as Biblical Scene).
Baldinucci describes Lorenzo Lippi as a precociously talented artist who showed a natural brilliance
as a draughtsman as well as being a talented horseman, dancer and writer. He recounts tales of Matteo
Rosselli, Lippi’s master, saying often in company: Lorenzo, you draw better than I do (Lorenzo, tu disegni
meglio di me) 1 . At the age of 40, Lorenzo married the daughter of the sculptor Giovanni Francesco
Susini, and as a result of the latter’s connections, was invited to be court painter to Archduchess Claudia,
the Florentine widow of Leopold V of Tyrol, at Innsbruck. A number of Lippi’s portraits, painted whilst
he was in Austria, are in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. In Innsbruck he also began the long,
humourous poem Malmantile Raequistato, for which he became and remains well known. A burlesque
love story employing folk tales and Florentine vernacular speech, the poem is evidence of Lippi’s wit and
culture. Back in Florence, Lippi became a friend and supporter of Salvator Rosa with whom he attended
literary academies and discussed the works of the classical writers. Lippi produced paintings for many of
the noble families of the city, his most famous work being the Triumph of David painted for Agnolo Galli
which depicts all of Galli’s seventeen children amongst the crowd celebrating David’s triumph. His aim
in painting was to follow nature; Baldinucci criticised him for his lack of artfulness but the purity and
refinement of his style were admired by Rosa in particular.
Despite having been acknowledged for its grandeur and fine quality by Academics, this painting was
only known from an old photograph until its recent re-appearance, as Consul Gaius Popillius drawing
a Circle around King Antiochus IV. Chiara d’Afflitto (see literature) described it as being one of the best
examples of his artistic achievement, on par with the Erminia and the Shepherds in the Museo Rospigliosi
in Pistoia 2 and dated it to the artist’s mature period in the second half of the 1660s. Particularly admirable
are the fusion between the grand and eloquent protagonists in the foreground and the details of the three
gracefully poised figures in the background, as well as the rich colours and subtle lighting. A preparatory
drawing for the young man standing by the river in the background is in the Kunst Museum, Copenhagen 3
(fig.1).
Francesca Baldassari has recently recognised that the subject is in fact a biblical episode taken from
Exodus, Chapter 7: Moses and his brother Aaron come before the Pharaoh to ask that the tribes of Israel
be allowed to leave Egypt, the Pharaoh challenges them to work a miracle to prove themselves. God had
told Moses to command Aaron to put his staff at the Pharaoh’s feet where it would transform into a snake.
The Pharaoh’s own magicians and wise men looked on but the Pharaoh’s heart remained hardened and
the next day God told Moses to command Aaron to touch the waters of the Nile with his staff and the river
would turn to blood. On the left of the composition, the arrogant figure of the Pharaoh and his attendants,
with their richly decorated and colourful garments, make a strong contrast with the austerely dressed and
sombre figure of Moses at the right edge of the scene. While the Pharaoh frames the reddening waters
22

23

Lorenzo Lippi, Moses before the Pharaohturning the
Water of the River Nile into Blood (detail).
1. Lorenzo Lippi, Man Bending to the Left, Kunst
Museum, Copenhagen.
with his crimson, Moses stands with a classical solemnity, casting his gaze downwards disdainfullywhile,
in the background, a man warns his fellow bathers of the horrible transformation.
Lippi depicts the scene with a fascinating freedom of interpretation: the Pharoah wears a form of
Roman tunic and sandals while his pageboy is clothed in a 16 th century jerkin with slashed sleeves and
pantaloons, Moses is given an otherworldly quality by virtue of his statuesque pose and the three faces
of the Pharoah’s followers have the immediacy of actual likenesses.
24

25

Giuseppe Assereto
Genoa 1626?-1657?
6
Portraits of Three Children, One Playing a Flute
Oil on pine panel. Bears initials in brown ink on the verso: G.A.N.P. and an inscription: Procacin.
27.8 x 41.3 cms. (11 x 16 ¼ in.)
Provenance: Bears wax seal with a 19 th century Gothic stryle monogram.
The biography of Giuseppe Assereto, son of Gioacchino (1600-1650) was recorded by Raffaele Soprani
in his collection of the Lives of Genovese artists: “Giuseppe Axereto [sic] his son learnt the principles
to follow a profession as a painter from his father and in fact showed an extraordinary ability to follow
his father’s style. He drew very accurately …” 1 . In the inventory taken on Gioacchino’s death, a few of
Giuseppe’s own works were also present and from other archival records it appears that he inherited his
father’s studio as well as some incomplete projects. His dates of birth and death are not recorded but
can be deduced from documents and he probably died from the plague which swept through Genoa
in 1657. Until recent years, his artistic personality was completely unknown. The first reconstruction
of his activity was made by the author of the present entry in 2009 2 and this was added to by the same
author’s monograph on Gioacchino Assereto and his school 3 , where a corpus of around fifty paintings
was established, of which the most important is the large Preaching of St. James, in the oratory of San
Giacomo alla Marina in Genoa, probably installed in place of the Last Supper commissioned from
Gioacchino, which remained unfinished on his death. Evidently, Giuseppe was considered as the most
suitable of Gioacchino’s pupils and contemporaries to receive such an important commission, for an
oratory in which many of the best Genoese artists of the time had worked, such as Valerio Castello,
Domenico Piola and Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione. A gifted painter, Giuseppe absorbed the naturalistic
style of his father and other contemporary masters but in an absolutely personal manner and with a
particularly successful expressivity.
The three children are captured with a vivid spontaneity and naturalism typical of Gioacchino Assereto
and his studio 4 . This sketch is painted on a panel with a thin preparation which is left visible, as part of
the construction of the heads, between the areas of thicker impasto executed in rapid brushstrokes - a
lively technique which adds to the vitality of the work.
Newly identified, the present picture is a significant addition to the artist’s œuvre, and its particular
quality reasserts the creative talent of this until recently forgotten artist. Giuseppe’s fine draughtsmanship,
lauded by Soprani, is visible in the dark outline brushstrokes used to define the faces. Particularly typical
of Assereto’s style is the manner in which he builds up a vibrant surface with small but rapid brushstrokes,
in an almost ‘impressionistic’ style. The head of the young boy playing the flute is stylistically similar
to the youth in the background of the Ecce Homo in the parish church of Santa Maria della Neve in
Genova-Bolzaneto 4 and to the figure of Christ in the Christ and the Adulteress 5 in the church of the
Cappuccini in Voltaggio, as well as to the the angel in the Saint Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy 6 , also in
Voltaggio. Furthermore, the young adulteress in the latter work is painted in a manner very similar to the
young girl on the left of this panel. The rich impasto formed from tightly meshed brushstrokes, is here
more reminiscent of il Grechetto than Gioacchino as can be seen in a substantial number of works which
have now been reattributed to Giuseppe from Gioacchino. The physiognomy of the three children is also
consistent with Giuseppe Assereto’s facial types: the child in profile harks back to Gioacchino while the
other two faces are of a type in Giuseppe’s work closer to Giovanni Andrea de Ferrari. Although only
one of Giuseppe Assereto’s paintings can be dated, the present work would seem to belong to the same
period as the Preaching of Saint James, around 1650.
Tiziana Zennaro
26

27

Govaert Flinck
Cleves 1615-1660 Amsterdam
7
An Old Man in a Velvet Hat leaning on a Window Sill
Oil on panel. Signed and dated G. Flinck f.1646 and inscribed with the Imperial Hermitage inventory
number 3654 at lower left.
70.5 x 60 cms. (27 ½ x 23 ¼ in.)
Provenance: Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky (1710-1775), merchant, financier, art dealer and collecting
advisor to Frederick the Great, Berlin, by 1764, when recorded as “Rembrand”, 1. alter Mann, der mit
dem Kopf auf der linken hand ruht. Extra fein gemahlt”, (28 x 23 inches), priced at 600 Reichstaler; by
whom sold in 1764 en bloc with 316 other paintings to Catherine II the Great, Empress of Russia (1729-
1796), founder of the Hermitage, Saint Petersburg, as Rembrandt; recorded in an inventory made after
her death, in 1797, no. 3654, and by descent to her grandson, Nicholas I, Emperor of Russia (1796-
1855), the Imperial Collection at the Winter Palace, Saint Petersburg; possibly sold in 1854 (Prevot,
Saint Petersburg, 6 th June 1854 and following days, lot 636, as (“Flinck. Head of an old man.”), the
dimensions incorrectly given as 6.3 x 5 vershki, or, by descent to his son, Alexander II, Emperor of Russia
(1818-1881), by whom possibly sent to Moscow in 1862 with 200 other pictures from The Hermitage,
for the picture gallery of the newly-established Moscow Public and Rumyantsev Museums; Acquired by
Wilhelm Friedrich Mertens (circa 1870-1957) or by his son, Wilhelm Mertens (1899-1938), certainly by
1932, both Saint Petersburg until 1917-1918, and subsequently Leipzig, and then by descent.
Literature: J.E. Gotzkowsky, “Specification meiner allerbesten und schönsten Original Gemählden
bestehen in 317 Stück nebst den allergenauesten Preißen”, circa 1764, MS, Berlin, Geheimes Staatsarchiv
Preussischer Kulturbesitz, I. HA., Rep. 11, no. 171-175, Russland D, Interzessionalia 1751-1765, fol. 253
recto, no. 18, as “Rembrand, 1. alter Mann, der mit dem Kopf auf der linken hand ruht Extra fein gemahlt”,
2 feet 4 inches by 1 foot 11 inches, 600 “Rthlr”; J. von Stählin, “Vornehmste Stücke aus dem an Ihren
Kays. Maj. Verkauften Gotzkowsky Cabinet aus Berlin”, circa 1764, MS, Saint Petersburg Branch of the
Archive of the Russian Federation Academy of Sciences, Fund 170, opis’ 1, delo 68, ff. 1a-4, reprinted in
A.I. Uspensky, “The Imperial Palaces”, Notes of the Imperial Nicholas II Moscow Archoeological Institute,
XXIII, 1913, part 2, p. lii, and in K. Malinovsky, ed., The Writings of Jacob Stählin on the Fine Arts in
Russia, Moscow, 1990, II, p. 99, as “Rembrandt. An old man, whose head is resting on his left hand”, 2
feet 4 inches by 1 foot 11 inches, 600 Thalers. Count J.E. Münnich, Catalogue raisonné des tableaux qui
se trouvent dans les Galeries, Salons et Cabinets du Palais Impérial de S.Pétersbourg, commencé en 1773
et continué jusqu’en 1785, 1773-1785, MS, Saint Petersburg, Hermitage Archives, Fund I, opis’ VI-A,
delo 85; Possibly Count J.E. Münnich, Catalogue des tableaux qui se trouvent dans les Galeries et dans
les Cabinets du Palais Impérial de Saint Pétersbourg, Saint Petersburg, 1774 (reprinted P. Lacroix, “Musée
du Palais de l’Ermitage sous le règne de Catherine II”, in Revue universelle des arts, XIII, pp. 164-179,
244-258, XIV, 212-225, XV, 47-53, 107-123), as one of nos. 57, “Rembrand. Le Portrait d’un vieillard”,
88, “Rembrand. La Tête d’un vieillard”, 914, “Rembrand. Portrait d’un vieillard”, 1882, “Rembrand.
Portrait d’un vieillard” or 1887, “Govaert Flinck. Portrait d’homme”; F.I. Labynsky et al., Catalogue of
the Paintings Kept in the Imperial Hermitage Gallery, the Tauride and Marble Palaces..., 1797, MS, Saint
Petersburg, Hermitage Archives, Fund 1, opis’ VI-A, delo 87, no. 3645, the dimensions given as 15.34
x 13.12 vershki (68.2 x 58.3 cms.); Probably Notice sur les principaux tableaux du Musée Impérial de
l’Ermitage à Saint-Pétersbourg, Saint Petersburg and Berlin, 1828, pp. 56 and 136, in room no. 11, the
“Salle de Rembrandt”, as Rembrandt, “un rabbin juif qui se résigne à payer”; Possibly Livret de la Galerie
Impériale de l’Ermitage de Saint-Pétersbourg: contenant l’explication des tableaux qui la composent,
avec de courtes notices sur les autres objets d’art ou de curiosité qui y sont exposés, Saint Petersburg,
1838, p. 127, in “Salle XI”, as Rembrandt; Possibly Baron N.E. Wrangel, ”L’Empereur Nicolas I et les
arts”, (Starye gody), VI, September-November 1913, p. 124, no. 636 under the 1854 sale, “Flinck. Head
of an old man”, the dimensions incorrectly given as 6.3 x 5 vershki and the inventory number incorrectly
28

29

given as 3121, or as one of the other 1,217 lots; C. Frank, “Die Gemäldesammlungen Gotzkowsky,
Eimbke und Stein: Zur Berliner Sammlungsgeschichte während des Siebenjährigen Krieges”, in M. North,
ed., Kunstsammeln und Geschmack im 18. Jahrhundert, Berlin, 2002, pp. 189-190, note 221, as ”Ehem.
Ermitage, 1862 nach Moskau abgegeben”; T. Ketelsen and T. von Stockhausen, The Provenance Index of
the Getty Research Institute: Verzeichnis der verkauften Gemälde in deutschsprachigen Raum vor 1800,
Munich, II, p. 1305, under 1764/00/00; N. Schepkowski, Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky: Kunstagent und
Gemäldesammler im friderizianischen Berlin, Berlin, 2009, pp. 462 and 577, “Laut Prof. Gotzkowsky
wurde das “Bildnis eines alten Mannes” 1862 nach Moskau verkauft”.
The present picture is to be included in T. van der Molen’s forthcoming Catalogue raisonné of the paintings
of Govaert Flinck.
Exhibited: Berlin, Galerie Dr. Schäffer, Hundert Seltene Holländer, April-May 1932, no. 39, “Flinck,
Govaert - Bildnis eines alten Mannes - Bez. und datiert 1646”, lent by the great-grandfather or grandfather
of the previous owners.
Acquired by Catherine the Great as part of her first and perhaps most sensational en bloc art purchase,
An old man at a casement is a rediscovered work by Govaert Flinck which can now be seen as one of
his most significant and powerful paintings. First documented in 1764 as by Rembrandt, the picture may
have remained under this attribution in the Russian Imperial collection until into the nineteenth century.
It was not until 1928, in a certificate made in Berlin by the scholar Wilhelm von Bode, that the painting
was formally recognized for the first time as by Flinck.
Notwithstanding this, and the painting’s subsequent appearance in an exhibition in Berlin in 1932, the
composition appears to have been known to a wider circle of scholars only by virtue of several copies (all
on canvas 1 ), so that neither Joachim von Moltke nor Werner Sumowski were aware of the present work at
the time of their respective publications on Flinck, in 1965 and 1983. However, Von Moltke did later get
to see the painting in person and described it in a letter to the late owner (14 February 1973) as: “ganz
ungewöhnlich gut and sehr charakteristisch” (“extraordinarily good and very characteristic”). Recently,
the attribution has kindly been confirmed on the basis of photographs by Tom van der Molen, who will
include An old man at a casement in his forthcoming catalogue raisonné of Flinck’s paintings.
Govaert Flinck was one of Rembrandt’s most talented pupils. His biographer Arnold Houbraken records
that he worked in Rembrandt’s Amsterdam studio for just a year - probably 1635-6 - and in this short time
became so adept at painting in Rembrandt’s manner that several of his pictures were sold as works by
Rembrandt’s own hand 2 . By the mid 1640s Flinck had built up a flourishing career in his own right, to the
extent that he had become one of Rembrandt’s chief rivals in Amsterdam, both as a history painter and as
a fashionable portraitist. He had also by this time become independently wealthy by virtue of his marriage
in 1645 to Ingeltje Thoveling (1619-1655), the daughter of a director of the East India Company. In May
1644 he paid 10,000 guilders to acquire two adjoining houses on the Lauriersgracht (now numbers 76
and 78) and converted the top two floors into a studio and gallery. Houbraken describes a visit to the
studio in which he found a Rembrandt-like array of items including exotic textiles, costumes, jewellery,
armour and sculptures, for use in paintings of exactly this kind. Rembrandt’s tronies - imaginary portraits
based on live models - which he had been painting regularly since the 1630s, were clearly influential
on Flinck’s own work in this area. These frequently featured old, bearded men in antique costume, are
referred to generically as philosophers or prophets, with emphasis given to their perceived wisdom in old
age. Flinck’s sitter here wears a red velvet cap, a gold chain, a black fur-trimmed coat, and a lace shirt
with elaborately frilled cuffs, and is depicted leaning on a richly embroidered cushion. Like Rembrandt,
Flinck uses this style of costume in a deliberate effort to transplant his subject into a timeless past, redolent
with Biblical, classical and medieval associations. Similar attire and probably the same model were used
by Flinck a year earlier for the Bearded man in a velvet cap now in The Metropolitan Museumin New
York. However, while the sitter for the New York picture is evenly lit and observed bust-length in much
30

the same manner that Flinck might employ for a standard portrait, in the present work the lighting is
more dramatic, distinctly Rembrandtesque and the pose more naturalistic and expressive. The man is
seen leaning forward, resting his head on his clenched left hand in an everyday gesture that suggests
contemplation and perhaps a degree of world-weary resignation. The pictorial origins of this gesture may
be traced back to Albrecht Dürer’s Melancholia engraving of 1514 (Bartsch 74), in which Melancholy
is personified by a winged woman, seated with her head in her hand, surrounded by instruments of
learning yet paralysed by idleness. Although Rembrandt seems never to have committed this particular
pose to paint, he did experiment with it in a number of drawings executed around the time that Flinck
was operating in his studio. These include the sheet in the Museum Boymans van Beuningen, Rotterdam,
showing Saskia at a Window in which she supports her head with her left hand.
The support used for the present painting has been examined by Professor Peter Klein, who has confirmed
that it is a single-plank poplar panel. The use of poplar is unusual in the context of North Netherlandish
panel painting. However, in the mid-1630s and the 1640s, Rembrandt and artists in his circle started
to experiment with panels made using a variety of exotic imported woods such as cordia, walnut and
mahogany as well as poplar, rather than just oak 3 .
The foundation of the Imperial Hermitage and of its successor, the State Hermitage Museum, Saint
Petersburg, is traditionally traced to 1764. Catherine the Great, crowned Empress of All the Russias
made her first purchase of pictures in opportunistic circumstances 4 when she acquired the collection
formed by a fascinating figure from Berlin, the entrepreneur and investor Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky.
Alongside works by Rembrandt, Frans Hals, Gerrit van Honthorst, Hans von Aachen, Bartholomeus van
der Helst and Hendrick Goltzius, this group included Govaert Flinck’s An old man at a casement, which
is therefore documented in the Imperial Collection at the Winter Palace from its very origins, into the
nineteenth-century. This founding acquisition was to unleash a passion for collecting which saw, over
ensuing decades, the purchase en bloc of some of Europe’s greatest private collections, including those of
Sir Robert Walpole at Houghton Hall, Crozat de Thiers in Paris, Tronchin in Geneva and Count Heinrich
Brühl in Dresden, and was to leave Saint Petersburg with a picture gallery rivaled by few others to this
day. We are grateful to Svetlana Borisovna Adaksina, Head Curator of the State Hermitage Museum, and
her office, for confirming verbally that in the manuscript catalogue of the Imperial Collection compiled
in 1797, the year after Catherine’s death, An old man at a casement is listed under the inventory number
3654, with the dimensions recorded as 15.34 x 13.12 vershki - 68.2 x 58.3 cm. This inventory number is
visible in an old photograph of the picture, which carries the Bode certificate of 1928 on its verso. 5 and 6
31

Sebastiano Ricci
Belluno 1659-1734 Venice
8
The Head of a Bearded Man Looking Down
Oil on canvas.
60.5 x 51.4 cms. (23 ¾ x 20 ¼ in.)
Provenance: Private Collection, France.
An enormous variation in the quality and degree of finish in Ricci’s work is often remarked upon.
Gregarious and popular as a character, he seems to have been sharp in negotiating commissions,
demanding high prices which, if they were not achieved, resulted in hastily executed work. Critically,
despite being admired for his innovations, Ricci has also been held up for his self-confessed practice
of borrowing other artists’ ideas, but in his lifetime it was also this ability to imitate the style of other
painters, particularly Veronese, Carracci and Magnasco, which impressed. Interestingly, his own method
of outlining his figures in brown as a way to make them stand out in a large composition was followed
by Giambattista Tiepolo and his son, Domenico, and Ricci is now considered absolutely key to the
emergence of the Rococo style in Venice, particularly in the field of history painting.
Exceptionally refined amongst Ricci’s surviving head studies, this beautifully painted and powerful work
dates from the late 1690s as has been kindly confirmed by Annalisa Scarpa Sonino. Though the handling
is absolutely typical of Sebastiano, the picture is rather unique amongst his identified works. A wellknown
series of head-studies, from the Consul Smith collection, purchased by George III and now at
Hampton Court, all record figures from Veronese’s painting now in the Gallerie dell’ Accademia, The
Feast in the House of Levi. Apart from these, an imposing self-portrait painted for the collection of the
Medici Grand Dukes 2 and an elegant, though clearly classicised profile study of a woman seem to be
the only other works by Ricci done in portrait format. Dignified and profoundly thoughtful, this figure
is swathed in a blue coat with a brown silk stripe, the style of which is strongly reminiscent of the robes
worn by Veronese’s sitters. The long beard also gives the man a senatorial air but his hair is tousled and
the effect is informal. It is tempting to think of the picture as a portrait of a fellow artist, friend or relation.
As a prototype, and with its rich painterliness and strong contrasts of light and shade, this painting
prefigures the splendid series of philosophers and Orientalists painted by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo and
his sons Giandomenico and Lorenzo.
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33

Donato Creti
Cremona 1671-1749 Bologna
9
A Sleeping Child Holding an Apple: “Bozzetto” for the painting of “La Carità”
Oil on canvas.
29 x 40.3 cms. (11 3 /8 x 15 7 /8 in.)
Provenance: Possibly Galleria Sampieri, Bologna 1841, sold as part of the Sampieri collection by Francesco
Giovanni Sampieri (1790-1863); P & D Colnaghi & Co. Ltd; David Rust Collection.
Literature: Possibly Catalogo dei quadri ed altri oggetti d’arte esistenti nella Galleria Sampieri posta in
Bologna, 1841, cat.39, “puttino coricato con pomo in mano di Donato Creti”.
This gentle and spontaneous painting, most probably executed from life, served as a model, with slight differences,
for the motif of a sleeping child in Creti’s circular allegory on copper, La Carità (fig.1), one of a group of four
paintings executed prior to 1721 for his most important Bolognese patron, Marcantonio Collina Sbaraglia. These
form part of the total group of sixteen works, commissioned by Collina Sbaraglia from the artist and left as a
legacy to the Collezioni Comunali d’Arte di Bologna in 1744. 2 Sbaraglia was a major figure in the city, heir to a
professor of medicine and anatomy and representative of a new class of generous and enlightened patrons who
aimed at bringing deeper culture to a city previously dominated by the church and aristocracy. Creti’s refined and
highly educated style with its sophisticated and luminous colouring was ideal for this purpose.
Of the four roundels dedicated to the Virtues, La Carità has the most complex and interesting composition. Where
the other three are hierarchical images clearly inspired by Renaissance archetypes, La Carità is voluminous
and naturalistic, indeed apart from the stylistic differences, the early documentation of the series suggests that
La Carità may have been executed independently as a slightly later addition 3 . The sleeping child, seen here,
is curled into the drapery of the generous, reclining figure of Charity, his feet balanced at the picture’s edge,
symbolic of repletion and comfort. Renato Rolli published a replica of similar dimensions (24 x 37cms), from a
Bolognese private collection 4 , giving to it the Sampieri provenance and catalogue reference as the only example
then known. That one, however, is identical to the figure as seen in the copper whereas the present picture has
various small differences suggesting that it could well be the prime and preparatory version. Here the child’s
face is seen in profile whereas the other sketch and the final work show the face in three quarters profile. The
positioning of the fingers around the apple is also
noticeably different in the present work as are the
arrangement of the boy’s tunic and the folds of the
drapery. Further evidence that the present study was
made in preparation for the Sbariglia commission is
that part of a column is visible at the left edge of the
canvas which is very much in keeping with the other
roundels in the series, all of which have acolumn but
which Creti removed for the final compostion of La
Carità. A further version of this study, was recorded
by F. Sacchi in 1872 as being in the Louvre, but was
subsequently lost and is known only through an
engraving 5 . The Bolognese historian Giovann Pietro
Zanotti asserted in 1739 that the roundel portrayed
Creti’s beautiful wife, Francesca Zani (died 1719),
along with the couple’s three sons; if this is the case,
it may explain why, apart from the charm of the
depiction, Creti made this tender oil study and all
additional replicas of the little boy asleep against his
mother’s skirts 6 .
1. Donato Creti, La Carità, Palazzo d’Accursio, Bologna.
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Giambattista Pittoni
Venice 1687-1767
10
St. Peter
Oil on canvas.
47 x 37 cms. (18 ½ x 14 ½ in.)
Giambattista Pittoni is considered, alongside Tiepolo and Piazzetta, as the most representative history
painter of the Venetian Rococo. The details of his early career are scarce other than that he studied painting
under his uncle Francesco Pittoni and later possibly with Antonio Balestra, joining the Venetian painters
guild in 1716. A decade later he was appointed honorary Academician of the Accademia Clementina in
Bologna and he went on to become a founding member of the Venetian Academy, the Accademia di Belle
Arti, succeeding Tiepolo as its President in 1758. Pittoni worked almost entirely from Venice with short
forays to Verona, but he received significant commissions from German, Russian and Polish collectors
including Marshal Schulenburg, who owned nine paintings by Pittoni and consulted him on restoration
matters and before buying works by other artists; Frederich Augustus, Elector of Saxony and later King of
Poland was one of his first patrons, displaying several works by the artist in his palace as early as 1722.
The discernable influence of the French School, in both his drawings and his paintings, is thought to have
been the result of a stay in Paris in 1720 in the company of Rosalba Carriera and Zanetti. Pittoni’s work
divides almost equally between secular and religious paintings, the latter comprising around thirty largescale
altarpieces and considerable numbers of smaller devotional pictures. Celebrated in his lifetime for
his handsome draperies Pittoni was also an exceptional colourist and though his reputation waned in the
19 th century, his influence had a lasting effect in Central Europe where his style was imported through the
work of Anton Kern, his most dedicated pupil.
Like Piazzetta, Pittoni executed a small number of devotional easel paintings of this type at different times
in his career. The present work, which was first recognised as the work of Pittoni by Annalisa Scarpa, has
the luminosity and solidity of his early period and may be compared with two versions of a St. Jerome, one
in the Museo Civico in Rimini and the other formerly in the Cecconi Collection, Florence, both dating to
the early 1720s 1 . The intensity of colours seen here is also a feature of his early work, with the particular
combination of sky blue and ochre yellow creating an almost electric effect. Other features of the 1720s
are the dry impasto and the structure of the drapery formed of long stripes; an identical technique is seen
in another painting of St. Peter, half-length and almost twice the size, now in the Kunstalle in Hamburg. 2
In the Rimini St. Jerome we see the right hand in exactly the same position as here except that he holds
a stone and a crucifix rather than the key to the Kingdom of Heaven.
Pittoni already seems to be at the height of his powers here; his use of paint is extraordinarily confident as
is the powerful rendering of light. Despite the humility expressed in the pose of the saint, who inclines his
head to hide his eyes, there is a strength and radiance in the depiction which reflects St. Peter’s position
as the keyholder to Heaven.
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Attributed to Francesco Guardi
Venice 1712-1793
11
Venetian Acrobats forming a Pyramid known as “Le Forze d’Ercole”
Oil on canvas.
72.3 x 88 cms. (28 ½ x 34 5 /8 in.)
Provenance: Ferruccio Asta, Venice, 1980; Private Collection, Paris.
Literature: Bianca Tamassia Marzarotto, Le feste Veneziane, Sansoni Editori, Florence, 1961, p. 36,
illustrated as Francesco Guardi (?).
Guardi began his career in the family studio, which had been established by his father, who died in 1716.
Gianantonio, the eldest brother born in 1699, ran the workshop over the following years, until his death
in 1760. Early works by Francesco are rarely documented and often the literature disputes the authorship
between Francesco and his brother. Annalisa Scarpa Sonnino kindly pointed out that the attribution
to Francesco Guardi of this painting had been suggested as long ago as 1961 and she considers that
attribution to be extremely plausible, although the scarcity of material clearly accepted as early work by
Francesco makes this hard to prove. Characteristic of Francesco’s handling however is the treatment of
the costumes, the dark lines of draughtsmanship picking out the details of the dress and the richly varied
and shimmering tones of the cloths. The dark tonality and the rich textures of this painting compare
with a series of Turkish scenes, depicting court life, commissioned from the Guardis by Marshal von
Schulenburg in the early 1740s and also with the two scenes of Venetian life in the Ca’Rezzonico, L’Arte
dei Coroneri and Il convegno diplomatico, which were recently exhibited in the monographic exhibition
at the Museo Correr. 1 A version of one of the Turquerie scenes, A Greek Favourite in the Harem, has
recently been given firmly to Francesco Guardi by Giuseppe Maria Pilo. The colour scheme and the
handling and of the depiction of the different cloths, with short and vibrant brushstrokes giving accents
of light and definition in the latter painting, are entirely comparable with the present work. 2
The “Forze d’Ercole” (strength of Hercules) was a competitive acrobatic display held between Venetian
neighbourhoods, divided into two rival factions of the Castellani partisans (the inhabitants of Castello,
San Marco and Dorsoduro) on one side, and the Nicolotti partisans (the parishioners of San Nicolò, San
Polo, Santa Croce and Cannaregio). It took place annually on the Thursday before Lent in front of the
Doge’s palace, in the presence of the Doge, the Signoria and the Ambassadors. The “Forze d’Ercole”
replaced the “Guerra dei Pugni” (War of Fists), a fierce and bloody fight which had become established
in 1303 and commemorated the feud which followed the assassination of a prelate of the Castellani
faction by a Niccolodi partisan. In 1705, the monastery of St. Gerome was let to burn and destroyed by
a fire because the two factions were too busy fighting to help put the fire out. As a result, the Serenissima
forbade the practice of these fights, which were replaced with the “Forze d’Ercole”. In preparation, a
wooden planking was constructed, to be placed on barrels if the game took place on solid ground, or on
two barges if it happened on the water; on this unstable base, the athletes had to build human pyramids
which could reach eight floors in height. The pyramids could be either figurative, such as, for example,
the “Colossus of Rhodes”, “The Venetian Beauty” or ”The Lion”, or allegorical, such as “Unity”, “Glory”
or “Fame”. The present picture is an allegory of Fame, as the Latin inscription on the scroll ‘Fama volat’
(fame flies) states. In 1798, when Venice was occupied by Napoleon first and by the Austrians after, the
Carnival festivities were suppressed in fear that such celebrations could trigger insurrections against the
occupiers.
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actual size detail
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41

François Boucher
Paris 1703-1770
12
Le Peintre de Paysage (The Landscape Painter)
Oil on canvas. Monogrammed on the bench: f. B
39 x 30 cms. (15 ¼ x 11 ¾ in.)
Provenance: Collection Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne, his posthumous sale, 10 th August 1778, lot 18, 1220
pounds, sold together with its apparent pendant, Le sculpteur dans son atelier, in fact by Jean Baptiste
Marie Pierre; Pierre-Hippolyte Lemoyne, architect, his sale, 19 th May 1828, lot 74, 120 francs; Comte de
Pourtalès-Gorgier, his posthumous sale, 27 th March-4 h April 1865, lot 228, 7.000 francs; S.E. Khalil-Bey,
his sale, 16 h -18 h January 1868, n°72, 14.000 francs; A. Hulot, his sale G.G.P., 9 h -10 h May 1892, lot 80,
25.000 francs; Baron Edmond de Rothschild, Château de Prégny.
Exhibited: L’Art au XVIIIe siècle, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 1883-1884, cat 17, collection de Mr Hulot.
Literature: Ed. and J. de Goncourt, L’Art du XVIIIe siècle, Paris, 1880, Vol. I, third edition, p.199, “Vte
Collet”; A. Michel, François Boucher, “Les Artistes célèbres”, Paris, 1889, p.96; G. Kahn, Boucher,
Biographie critique, Paris, 1904, rep. p.44 (with location mistakenly given as the Louvre); A. Michel,
François Boucher, catalogue by L. Suillé and Ch. Masson, Paris, 1906, cat. 1129 et 1230; P. de Nolhac,
François Boucher, catalogue by Georges Pannier, Goupil & Cie, Paris, 1907, p.37, ill. opp. p.10, cat.
p.143; H. MacFall, “Boucher, the man, his time, his art and his significance 1703-1770”, The Connoisseur,
special edition, 1908, ill. p.144; P. de Nolhac, Boucher, premier peintre du roi, Paris, 1925, p.76, ill. opp.
p.76; A. Ananoff, “Attributions et identifications nouvelles de quelques dessins de François Boucher et de
Gabriel de Saint Aubin”, (communication of 16 octobre 1965) Bulletin de la Société d’Histoire de l’Art
français, 1965, pp. 175-176; Regina Shoolman Slatkin, François Boucher in North American Collections,
100 Drawings, exhibition catalogue, Washington and Chicago, 1974, under cat.33; A. Ananoff, François
Boucher, Lausanne, 1976, vol.I, p. 209, cat.76, fig.338 (as by Boucher and Pierre); exhibition catalogue,
François Boucher 1703-1770, Paris, New York and Detroit, 1986-1987, under cat. 22, pp.150-151.
Described in the Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne sale as “un joli morceau
plein de gaîté et d’agrément”, this remarkable canvas depicts a
painter’s studio, one which the Goncourts, André Michel and
Nolhac were all pleased to describe as Boucher’s own, with the
artist dressed “in a dressing gown and cotton cap à la Chardin,
seated in front of an easel, with all the clutter of work around him,
his wife, a child in arms, looking over his shoulder and two young
boys, one mixing colours and the other holding a portfolio” 1 . The
1828 sale catalogue of the architect Pierre-Hippolyte Lemoyne
had first proposed an autobiographical interpretation of the
canvas: “the painter is François Boucher himself; the young
pupil is Deshays …..the young woman is madame Boucher”,
though this had been absent from the sale following the death
of his father Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne in 1778 and Ananoff much
later demonstrated that the age alone of the figures depicted
precluded this delightful but fantastic description from being an
accurate one.
1. François Boucher, Study: Head of a
Child and Two Hands, formerly in
the J.P. Heseltine Collection.
A tour de force of brushwork, concentrated onto a diminutive
canvas, the picture demonstrates the exuberance of Boucher’s
technique at this relatively early point in his career. Ananoff’s
erroneous suggestion that it was the work of two hands, Boucher
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and Jean-Baptiste Marie Pierre, has been firmly dismissed by both Alastair Laing and Nicolas Lesur
(co-author of Jean-Baptiste Marie Pierre 1714-1789 Premier peintre du roi, Paris, 2009), who separately
explained that Ananoff’s mistake was based on a misunderstanding of the catalogue of the Lemoyne sales
in which two paintings were placed in the same lot as Tableaux éxécutés par M. Pierre & M. François
Boucher. Ananoff illustrated a poor quality reproduction of the work and it may be that he never saw
the original, suggesting instead that the small blank space in the legend on the 1752 engraving of the
composition: Peint par Boucher de l’Acad. R le de Peinture should have been filled with the name Pierre
and an et, rather than the more logical François. As Alastair Laing also pointed out, by placing Le peintre
de paysage in the year 1732, Ananoff was in any case ruling out the possibility of Pierre (1714-1789)
being a co-author. A drawing of the little boy holding the portfolio was published as connected to the
painting by Ananoff, provenance given as formerly in the J.P. Heseltine collection (where it was attributed
to Watteau) 2 (fig.1).
In a somewhat smaller painting on panel, now in the Musée du Louvre, again entitled The Landscape
Painter 3 , Boucher depicts a younger and even more bohemian artist, painting alone in a garret. A drawing
in the Los Angeles County Museum studies the composition of the Louvre painting but the artist is older
than the one in that painting and the model is clearly the same as the young man in the present picture,
though seated in reverse 4 (fig.2). These works all appear to belong to the early 1730s and show Boucher
exploring the theme of the painter at work, using a playful but at the same time virtuoso manner. Boucher
was also perhaps wishing to highlight the deprivations suffered by young artists, thereby prefiguring a
theme which became much more common in the 19 th century. The Louvre panel, though small in scale,
has the conceit of using the composition of an actual capriccio landscape by Boucher 5 , depicted in
remarkable detail, for the canvas on the easel. The present work, again with its exceptional detail shows
another clearly realised painting within a painting but also the wonderful elements of still-life which are
gathered in the disorder of the studio: paints, jugs, baskets, onions hanging from the ceiling, candles and
books; the studio is in fact, surely, a kitchen.
2. François Boucher, The Artist in his Studio, Los Angeles
County Museum.
Anecdotal and picturesque, if not exactly realistic,
this picture belongs with a small number of genre
scenes all seemingly painted prior to 1735; these
include La belle cuisinière in the Musée Cognacq-
Jay, and the lost La belle villageoise known from a
1738 engraving by Pierre Soubeyran. As the 1986
catalogue to the François Boucher exhibition writes
of these aforementioned compositions, “It is in the
teeming detail of the setting and the prominence
accorded to the still life that these pictures appear
most Dutch” and yet whereas Dutch genre scenes
tend to show the protagonists as “exemplifications of
a social type, in Boucher the purely human interest
of the scene comes first.” Pointing out the mastery
of these scenes the catalogue also remarks upon
the puzzling fact that Boucher abandoned genre
so rapidly even though it gave him the chance to
display his virtuosity. Two chief reasons for this are
proposed: that Boucher was unwilling to compete
against Chardin in such a field and also that the
quality of his artistry and technique would not be
appreciated by the habitual collectors of Dutch
art and genre subjects. Meanwhile, he made this
exceptional example, which for its subject matter
and for the level of attention he gave to it must surely
have been close to his heart.
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Hubert Robert
Paris 1733-1808
13
The Sack of an Ancient Pyramid
Oil on canvas. Oval. Unlined.
52.7 x 63.8 cms. (20 3 /4 x 25 1 /8 in.)
Provenance: Collection of a Spanish Noblewoman.
This unusual work from Robert’s later years represents an unrecorded example of the artist’s life-long
fascination with Egypt and the pyramids. During his first months in prison at Sainte-Pélagie when he
could not paint, Robert whiled away the time by rereading Claude-Étienne Savary’s Lettres sur l’ Égypte
(1788-89), celebrated at the time for its picturesque descriptions and brilliant style. He wrote a charming
letter to the daughter of a fellow captive - the minor poet Jean-Antoine Roucher (1745-1794) - who had
sent him the book, expressing his pleasure at being able to “visit” again that land where the ancient monuments
had defied the ravages of time and nature. He concluded by saying that, when he had finished
“his race round the pyramids”, he collapsed in her father’s cell where the talk turned to the loved ones
beyond the prison walls 2 .
Early in his career, Robert turned his back on a Rococo depiction of Egyptian motifs in Rome, like the
Pyramid of Caio Cestio, for a more visionary approach to this subject-matter that has been said to anticipate
Étienne-Louis Boulée’s 3 . This is best seen in the Egyptian Fantasy (signed and dated Rome, 1760)
in a private collection, where the artist united Fischer von Erlach’s images of cloud-wreathed immensity
with Piranesi’s bold foreshortening to produce what is one of his most singular works 4 . However, not all
of Robert’s depictions of pyramids, like, for example, that of 1779 at Arkhangelskoïe 5 , near Moscow, are
of the same intensity.
Interestingly, the present picture, however, may hide a more serious meaning under its seemingly
light-hearted and amusing subject, as can be seen by comparing it to a related drawing from the late 1790s,
horizontal in format, with the pyramid, one column and the fallen sarcophagus but with the scene of pillage
located in the Roman campagna (fig.1) 6 . More important than Robert’s changes to staffage (though
the figures are still dressed as Italian country people) and shape are those to place and atmosphere. There
are now two pyramids with the main
one sited in the middle distance to
increase its monumentality, the foreground
being littered with Robert’s
“débris imposants” of broken obelisks
and columns, while the leafly,
bucolic setting has disappeared to
be replaced by a vast, desert waste.
1. Hubert Robert, The Sack of an Anciant Pyramid, Private Collection.
It is well known that Robert often
responded to events after 1789 in
an oblique fashion, coding his characteristic
subject-matter with messages
about his own plight and that
of his friends. Emblematic of this is
the pair of paintings with birds imprisoned
and freed from their cages
which he gave to Madame de Tourzel
(1749-1832) who was gaoled
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several times for her loyalty to the family of Louis XVI 7 , narrowly escaping death on each occasion, or the
picture commemorating the return to France of Madame de Genlis (1746-1830) in 1801 8 . What incident
could have lead Robert to do something similar in the present Sack of an Ancient Pyramid?
Napoleon invaded Egypt in July 1798, issuing a proclamation that he had come to restore liberty and
uphold Islam. After an easy capture of Alexandria, the French advanced up the Nile, destroyed the Mameluke
army at the Battle of the Pyramids on 21 st July, and entered Cairo. Always ambivalent to the new
order and its considerable achievements, which he judged to be as ignorant as it was opulent 9 , Robert
was not above hunting with the hounds and running with the hares. A large canvas (signed and dated
1798) with a diminishing vista of pyramids and obelisks and surrounded by dancing and singing figures,
in The Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal, may represent his “official” view of the Egyptian campaign, while
the present canvas may be a more private meditation on the pernicious effects of marauding armies -
expressed anachronistically by the Roman sarcophagus cascading from the hands of grave-robbers - on
those “ossuaries of Antiquity” that he loved so much. 10
The group of figures with a man trying to restrain a rearing horse in the middle foreground was most
probably inspired by Guillaume Coustou’s acclaimed two monumental marbles of a rearing horse of
1743-45, which were originally executed for Marly, but moved in 1794 to the Place de la Concorde in
Paris, and now in the Louvre (fig.2).
2. Guillaume Coustou, Rearing Horse,
Musée du Louvre, Paris.
actual size detail
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Francesco Guardi
Venice 1712-1793
14
Lagoon Capriccio with a Bridge
Oil on canvas.
26.2 x 39.2 cms. (10 ¼ x 15 3 /8 in.)
Provenance: Private Collection, France.
Few documentary records exist to record the events of Francesco’s life apart from his birth and death and the
marriage of his sister to Giovanni Battista Tiepolo in 1719. He was briefly inscribed into the Painters Guild of
Venice in the early 1760s and only became a member of the Venetian Academy in 1784, nine years before
his death. It has been a matter of dispute as to whether Francesco actually became Canaletto’s pupil as was
asserted by the 18 th century diarist Pietro Gradenigo. In 1923 Giuseppe Fiocco established from documentary
evidence that Francesco trained in his elder brother Gianantonio’s studio and that he collaborated on history
paintings. However, as James Byam Shaw suggested, it is likely that on his brother’s death, Francesco quickly
responded to the increasing popularity of view-painting and would most surely have had the chance to study
Canaletto’s paintings, such as those for Joseph Smith, the British Consul in Venice. Byam Shaw extrapolates
further that Guardi, would not have been above apprenticing himself to the famed Canaletto even in midlife
and numbers of his paintings are derived, often precisely, from drawings by Canaletto 1 . “Undoubtedly it
was the success of Canaletto’s Vedute that inspired him to try his hand at the type of paintings in which his
great natural gifts found a perfect medium of expression … But while Canaletto looked at Venice through
the camera obscura and corrected perspectives by rule and lines and angles .. Guardi painted his immediate
impression, the quivering air and the glittering lagoon” 1 . Unlike Canaletto and the Tiepolos, Guardi seems
never to have sought fame abroad, preferring to work almost exclusively in and around his native Venice and
creating a great reputation for himself as a master of skies and light and atmosphere, both in his depictions of
his city, its buildings and events and in his fantastical inventions.
In discussing the capricci, Alessandro Bettagno wrote of the extraordinary fertility of Francesco Guardi’s
imagination, which was perhaps initially inspired by the views invented by his compatriots, Luca Carlevarijs
and Marco Ricci. A less obvious inspiration, but one relevant to the present painting, and in Bettagno’s view
intrinsic to Guardi’s creative tissue, comes from that of another Venetian native, Giovanni Battista Piranesi 2 .
The motif of a rustic bridge with a Roman memorial monument at its centre, spanning the low waters of
the lagoon is one which appears in a small number of Guardi’s capricci, both horizontal and vertical in
format. Those which have been published are the vertical Capriccio con ponte, ara Romane e cavaliere, from
the collection of Vittorio Cini, Venice 3, and the so-called Capriccio rustico con ponte, a similar horizontal
composition in the raccolta museale collection of G. Cagnola, in Gazzada, near Treviso which was dated to
the 1780s in the recent exhibition at the Museo Correr 4 . Further examples are the one lost in 1943, formerly in
the Kunsthalle, Hamburg and another described by Morassi as being damaged due to overcleaning, formerly
with the Knoedler gallery in New York which appeared more recently at auction, where its poor state of
preservation and overpaint was confirmed 5 . Part of the delightfulness of the composition, and common to
all the versions mentioned, is in the Piranesian Roman monument which catches the sun and seems to perch
uncertainly on the rustic, dilapidating bridge. This previously unknown and very well preserved canvas,
is a new addition to the artist’s corpus of paintings of his mature style of the 1780s, which can be playful,
delicate in tone and with a particularly atmospheric, strong and silvery light. In this instance the brilliance
is partly created by Guardi’s innovative of a white base rather than the red base commonly used in 18 th
century painting, and which appears in earlier pictures by the Venetian Master as well. Writing of a view of
the Giudecca Canal and the Church of Santa Marta in the Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon, which dates from
the same period, Daniele D’Anza describes the manner in which Guardi uses remarkably dilute paint to
create a fusion of the elements of sky and water, which become almost monochromatic, creating a sense of
liquidity which is highly atmospheric. Guardi was described as working with furious speed through the use
of “colori molto ogliosi” and the effect is one which though not always understood by his contemporaries has
enchanted painters and art lovers through successive centuries 6 .
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Johann Heinrich Fuseli R.a.
Zurich 1741-1825 Putney-Heath
15
Macbeth’s Three Witches or the Weird Sisters
Oil on canvas. Inscribed in Greek on the reverse of the relining canvas, probably a transcription of a now
hidden text on the back of the original support: These are Women but I call them Gorgons (translation
from Aeschylus’s Eumenides).
62.8 x 76.9 cms. (24 ¾ x 30 ¼ in.)
Provenance: H. Farrer, London; Brigg Price Fountaine (died 1825) Narford Hall, Norfolk; Sale, London,
Sotheby’s, 4 th April 1973, lot 75 (withdrawn; sale, London, Sotheby’s, 14 th July 1976, lot 120; Donald
Munson; sale, London, Christie’s, 4 th May 1995, lot 51; sale, New York, Christie’s, 24 th January 2003, lot
135; Private Collection.
Fuseli began his career in training for the priesthood and ended it in London as a Professor of Painting
at the Royal Academy. He only began painting seriously at the age of 38. Known as the “wild Swiss”, he
was highly respected despite his clear eccentricity. An autodidact as an artist, he had, however, received
a thorough classical education and knew Greek, Latin, Hebrew, French, Italian, German, of course, and
English. He was an admirer of Rousseau and a keen supporter of the abolition of slavery. Devoted to
England which he saw as a country of liberty, he was also a passionate theatre-goer to whom Shakespeare
was the “great instructor of mankind”. He spent 8 years in Rome before reaching England and his artistic
models became Michelangelo, Rubens, Raphael and Piranesi. His tendency towards obsession is visible
in the subjects of his drawings and paintings but spilt over into his fascination with visions of nightmare,
sorcery, the demonic and the supernatural. A highly refined draughtsman, he used his drawings, in
particular, to explore his taste for the erotic. In addition to the support of Sir Joshua Reynolds and the
London Academy, he was elected in 1817 as a member of the Academy of St Luke in Rome, this time
on the recommendation of the sculptor Antonio Canova. He taught John Constable, greatly inspired the
poet-artist William Blake and lived to the age of 84.
In this extraordinary painting dating from between 1783 and 1787, Fuseli illustrates the pivotal moment
in Shakespeare’s Macbeth in Act 1, Scene 3, in which Macbeth encounters the Three Witches, who
draw out of him his violent ambition. Fuseli painted at least three other versions of this subject: one
now in the Kunsthaus, Zurich (fig.1), which was probably the basis of a mezzotint engraving by John
“Raphael” Smith published in March 1785 as “The Weird Sisters/ each at once her choppy finger/laying
upon her skinny lips”, one now in the collection of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-Upon-Avon,
one formerly with the Kirchheimer-
Bollag Gallery in Zurich as well as a
fourth (possibly a copy) in the North
Carolina Museum of Art. Many
years later, Fuseli painted another
version of the scene showing
Macbeth and Banquo coming
upon the witches who are shown
facing to the right. 1 The present
work, which is on a coarse and
textured canvas, is very different
from the other versions by virtue of
its expressive and, indeed, highly
naturalistic character. The paint
surface is thick and full of impasto,
the paint strokes are extremely
1. Johann Heinrich Fuseli, the Weird Sisters, Kunsthaus, Zurich. varied and often very energetic. The
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three strange, angular faces are more differentiated, as are their curiously elongated and contorted fingers
and hands and unlike all the other versions, the cowls of the three witches are of loose cloth rather than
a stiff headdress and the central witch has a crazed fringe of escaping white hair. It would seem likely
that these figures are modeled on the male actors who would have played the parts of the witches on the
stage. The order in which Fuseli painted the various versions of this composition is not known; while the
Kunsthaus picture was conjectured by David Schiff as being the one exhibited at the Royal Academy in
1783, the freedom and immediacy of the present work as well as the significant differences, do argue
for its being the earliest and most experimental of the group. A further technical aspect of the painting
also supports this order: Fuseli has here added a strip of canvas at the left edge of the picture in order
to complete the composition more fully; if he had been reworking an established image, he would
presumably have had a clear idea of how to place it in the space allowed, thus making the addition of
the strip of canvas unnecessary.
In 1786, Fuseli, in the company of other artists of the day, was invited to dinner by the print publisher
John Boydell who was also Lord Mayor of London. During the evening the group conceived the idea
of a “Shakespeare Gallery”, a means to establish the importance of historical painting in the country.
Noteworthy artists were to produce depictions of scenes from Shakespeare to be circulated as engravings
on the continent. The first exhibition of this work was held in 1789. As we see here, Fuseli had already
embraced the intense poetry and drama of English literature of the 16 th and 17 th centuries and a number of
his most fascinating paintings are representations of scenes from Shakespeare or Milton, mostly painted
in the build up to and around these years.
Recorded as being in the Billiard Room at Narford Hall in Norfolk, seat of the Fountaine family, in around
1820. According to J.P. Neale’s Views of the Seats of Noblemen and Gentlemen in England, Wales,
Scotland and Ireland, London 1818-1823) the picture remained in the Fountaine family at least until
1894 when it was marked with the stencil numbering of Christie’s auction house. David H. Weinglass
will include this painting in the forthcoming updated English language edition of David Schiff’s 1973
catalogue raisonné of Fuseli’s works.
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actual size detail
57

Felice Giani
San Sebastiano Curone 1758-1823 Rome
16
Pyramus and Thisbe
Oil on canvas.
37 x 43 cms. (14 ½ x 17 in.)
Born near Genoa, Felice Giani studied in Pavia with the architect Antonio Galli Bibbiena before
continuing his training in the studios of Ubaldo Gandolfi and Domenico Pedrini in Bologna. In 1780
he enrolled at the Accademia di San Luca in Rome, where he was a pupil of Pompeo Batoni. Soon
thereafter he embarked on a career as a decorative fresco painter. In such projects as the decoration of
the Palazzo Altieri in Rome, arguably his masterpiece as a mural painter, Giani developed a manner of
ornamental decoration that incorporated classical elements inspired by Roman wall paintings, executed
in fresco or tempera and often combined with stucco work. He also worked at the Palazzo Chigi and
the Villa Borghese in Rome before returning to Bologna in 1784. For the next ten years he worked
mainly in Faenza (Giani is sometimes known as “Il Faentino”) and Bologna, though he travelled widely
throughout Northern Italy and continued to work in Rome. Between 1790 and 1796 Giani hosted a series
of informal drawing sessions at his house in Rome, a “salon” open to both Italian and foreign artists that
became known as the Accademia dei Pensieri, and which, among the many artists who attended the
academy were Luigi Sabatelli, Vincenzo Camuccini, Giuseppe Bossi, Bartolomeo Pinelli and François-
Xavier Fabre. Amongst Giani’s most important fresco commissions of the early years of the 19th century
was the decoration of several rooms in the Palazzo Milzetti in Faenza, executed between 1802 and
1805. Later Roman commissions included work in the Palazzo di Spagna and the Palazzo del Quirinale,
the residence of the French Viceroy in Rome. In 1803 Giani visited Paris, where he is thought to have
decorated rooms at the Tuileries and at Malmaison for the Empress Josephine. In 1813, he also completed
the decoration of the Villa Aldini at Montmorency (near Paris), which was sadly destroyed five years later.
While Giani travelled frequently between Paris and Italy, little of his French work survives today.
The subject of this oil sketch is taken from Ovid’s Metamorphosis, in which he tells how the young couple
from Babylon, being forbidden to marry by their parents, planned to meet in secret one night under a
mulberry tree by a spring outside the city walls. Thisbe arrived first and found a lioness, fresh from a kill
and with its jaws dripping with blood, quenching her thirst at the spring. She fled in such haste that she
dropped her veil. The wild beast tore it to shreds, drenching it with its blood, and when Pyramus arrived,
at the sight of the bloody garment, he assumed that the lioness has killed his lover. Pyramus then killed
himself by falling on his sword, in proper Roman fashion, his spurting blood colouring the mulberries
dark red. Upon her return, Thisbe, finding her lover lying dead, first mourns her loss and then stabs herself
with her lover’s sword. In the end the Gods listen to Thisbe’s lament and in honour of the forbidden love,
forever change the mulberry fruits into the stained colour.
In the present oil, previously unknown and in excellent state of preservation, the lovers are shown lying
dead on the ground by a fountain, while the formidable lioness walks slowly away into a background
which, as Anna Ottani observes, is “so geometric, between Poussin, Domenichino and most of all David’s
Belisarius, a very clear and beautiful mark of the artist” 1 .
In her monographic study of the artist’s work, Anna Ottani Cavina points out that Giani considered
painting in oil to be too time consuming and much preferred to measure his talent on frescoes, at which
he excelled. As a consequence, his easel paintings are relatively rare, and in fact only about thirty small
canvases are known, including both the finished works and the bozzetti, executed in oil or tempera 2 .
In both style and handling, the present painting is comparable to works executed during the last decade
of the 18 th century, and in particular to a small oil on paper of similar dimensions to the present work, in
which Giani has chosen to illustrate another episode from Ovid’s Metamorphosis, the myth of Pan and
Syrinx 3 .
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59

Giuseppe Bernardino Bison
Palmanova 1762-1844 Milan
17 a
17b
The Departure of the Bucintoro
The Return of the Bucintoro
A pair. Oil on canvas.
28.2 x 39.3 cms. (11 1 /8 x 15 1 /3 in.)
Provenance: From a Genoese Noble family.
One of the last exponents of the 18 th Century tradition of view painting, Giuseppe Bernardino Bison
received his artistic training in the Venetian studio of Anton Maria Zanetti. Before he settled in Trieste in
around 1800, he worked as a decorative fresco painter in a number of palaces and villas in the various
towns of the Veneto. These included a series of frescoes in the Palazzo Manzoni in Padua, executed
around 1790 and followed by other decorative projects for the Villa Tironi and Lancenigo, the Villa
Spineda at Breda di Piave and the Casino Soderini in Treviso. Among Bison’s more important works
after moving to Trieste are his decorations for the Palazzo Carciotti, completed in around 1805, and the
Palazzo della Vecchia Borsa, executed three years later. In 1831, Bison moved to Milan, where he was
established for the remainder of his career. Here he also worked as a scenographer, producing stage
designs for the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, among others. Bison was a virtuoso draughtsman, and while his
earliest works show the influence of Giambattista Tiepolo, his later drawings tend towards Neoclassicism.
In this pair of exuberant and glittering oils, Bison, following in the steps of Carlevarijs, Canaletto and
Guardi, celebrates a quintessentially Venetian tradition in all its hectic, picturesque glory, the Ascension
Day ceremony of the Bucintoro, the state galley, carrying the Doge out to the Adriatic to perform the
marriage of the city of Venice to the sea, the Sposalizio del Mare. The last Bucintoro built in 1729 was a
magnificent gilded barge, 35 metres long and 8 metres high with a throne in the stern and figurehead of
Justice with her sword and scales. It needed 168 oarsman and 40 sailors and she crossed the Grand Canal
almost seventy times before being destroyed in 1798 on the orders of Napoleon, a cruel demonstration
of his victory over the city. Luca Carlevarijs’s magnificent depiction dates from 1710 (now in the Getty
Museum), Canaletto’s last painting of the subject dates from around 1754 and Guardi’s metre long version,
now in the Louvre, from 1766-70. Here, Bison, working on a more delicate but highly theatrical scale,
using his characteristic palette of rich colours, meticulously but thickly applied with thin brushstrokes,
has focused on the colour and choreography of the attendant gondolas, spectacularly decorated, with
their splendid, costumed gondolieri, behind them, the city is rendered as a backdrop to the gaiety and
flamboyance of the boats. The handling and technique of these two superbly preserved depictions of the
Bucintoro at sea, suggest a date of execution in the first quarter of the 19 th century.
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61

Filippo Palizzi
Vasto 1818-1899 Naples
18
Il Corricolo Napoletano: The Carriage between Naples and Vietri
Oil on cardboard, laid on board. Signed and dated lower right Fil. Palizzi / 1849 Vietri
26.8 x 38 cms. (10 ½ x 15 in.)
Provenance: Private Collection, Paris.
Filippo Palizzi and his brother Giuseppe were early leaders in the move to realism in Italian art of the
19 th Century. Filippo began his career in his home town on the Adriatic as a sculptor of crib figures. On
moving to Naples in 1837, he apprenticed himself to the neoclassical painter Costanzo Angelini and
Camillo Guerra, a professor of the Academy. His own inclination led him, however, towards landscape
painting and the observation of real life. Filippo was an intense and serious minded character, increasingly
political but averse to the limelight; he also disliked showing his work to fellow artists and generally
avoided visits from painters travelling to Naples from abroad, such as Schedrin and Corot. In 1842 Palizzi
first began travelling, initially to Moldavia; he then stayed in Naples whilst his brother moved to Paris,
allying himself with the artists of the Barbizon
School. But over a decade later, Filippo went
to Paris himself, travelling through France,
Belgium and Holland and returning to Naples
via Rome and Florence. Palizzi was one of the
very first painters in Italy to become interested
in photography. Already in the 1850s, he was
using photographic images as models for his
paintings. He developed a very precise and
highly detailed technique and became well
known for his extremely accomplished views
and depictions of the more rustic elements
of Neapolitan life. Palizzi also developed a
speciality in painting animals and continued
to model figures and works in ceramic and
maiolica. His paintings can be seen in the
Galleria d’arte moderna, Rome, the Galleria
Carruti, Milan and in the Instituto di Belle Arti
and the Galleria d’arte moderna in Naples.
actual size detail
This skillfully and highly detailed oil by Filippo
Palizzi is a splendid example of the artist’s
realist approach. It appears to be an early
example of a subject which he returned to
repeatedly in drawings and in an engraving 1 ;
a larger less hectic version of the scene, oil on
canvas, dating from 1856, is in the collection
of the Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Rome 2 . Here,
in the present panel, we see the galloping
horse, straining at the reins, the dust rising
from the wheels, the passengers clinging on to
any available post, a second driver brandishing
a whip. In the distance, the bay of Naples can
be glimpsed.
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63

Eugenio Cecconi
Leghorn 1842-1903 Florence
19
After the Hunt
Oil on canvas. Signed E Cecconi at lower right.
26.5 x 68 cms. (10 ½ x 26 ¾ in.)
Provenance: Private collection, England.
Eugenio Cecconi was born into a prosperous family. His father Carlo, a landowner, was an active patriot
who helped conspirators in their dream of a unified Italy and in fact, following the 1848 Leghorn riots, the
family had to flee and take refuge in the countryside. There Cecconi lived in close contact with nature in an
almost wild and uncontaminated environment. He soon developed a love for animals, as well as a passion
for hunting. At his father’s behest, Cecconi went to school in Turin and then moved to Pisa, where he took a
degree in law at the University. While training with a lawyer in Florence, the young Cecconi also followed
art lessons at the Accademia, and in 1865, his father died prematurely, enabling him to dedicate himself
entirely to art. Moving back to Leghorn, Cecconi rented a studio and met Diego Martelli, the dedicated
supporter of French Impressionism and the Italian Macchiaioli, who invited him to Castiglioncello, where
he worked in close contact with Boldini, Signorini and Abbati. In 1879, Cecconi exhibited at the Turin
Promotrice and in 1872 at the Milan National Exhibition, where his painting of Macchiaiole di Tombolo was
well received by the critics. In 1875, he embarked on a trip to Tunisia, returning with numerous studies and
impressions. In 1877 he moved to Torre del Lago, a small town in the Maremma region situated between
Lake Massaciuccoli and the Tyrrenian Sea. He took part in large hunting parties, which he then painted.
During the eighties, the artist reached his full artistic maturity and produced a number of masterpieces such
as The Boar Shoot in the Burano Marsh (Modern Art Gallery of Palazzo Pitti, Florence) and Leaving for the
Big Hunt (National Gallery of Modern Art, Rome). During those years, his exhibiting activities became
frantic, participating in most of the exhibitions of the Florence and Turin Promotrice and in other important
64

international shows such as the 1883 International Exhibition of Fine Arts in Rome. After the eighties, he
exhibited more sporadically, at the Brera Triennale in Milan in 1900, and in 1901 in Turin. His talents were
not limited to painting. Cecconi was also a writer and a poet, and composed articles and poems mainly
dedicated to hunting and the Maremma. During the last years of his life, he collaborated on a translation of
Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book and Edmond de Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac and Les Romanesques.
He died of a heart attack in 1903 in his Florence home, while writing an article on hare hunting.
Eugenio Cecconi was a leading member of the Tuscan Macchiaioli painters, who, along with Fattori, Lega,
Abbati, Sernesi, Signorini, and flanked by Neapolitan and Lombard artists, painted landscapes and animals
such as oxen, sheep, horses, dogs and game en plein air in the countryside. He came to characterise this
group of artists who, for the critics of the time, were the “bucolic cantors of pastureland and sheep”.
The present picture is executed on the long and narrow horizontal canvas, a shape favoured by the
Macchiaioli painters, and the scene takes place in the artist’s much loved Maremma. In the foreground, a
group of now relaxed Butteri (cattle breeders) have just returned from the hunt and are letting their horses
enjoy a well-deserved drink at a trough, while in the background, the braccaioli (beaters) are leading their
dogs home. A few patches of blue show through the cloudy yet luminous sky as the light is just starting to
fade in the Autumn afternoon; there is an overall sense of quietness and fulfilment following the hard day
of galloping after wild boars in the wooded countryside. It is not raining, but the air is filled with water,
and the ground is muddy and scattered with puddles around the trough where the horses have trampled
on the grass. The artist has also included acutely observed details such as the reflection of the horses’
heads and legs in the thin stripe of water in the trough, a rearing horse at the right, and the splash of water
caused by the hoof of the dark horse flanked by the two bays in the centre of the composition. The overall
rendering of this moment following the hunt is so effective that Cecconi succeeds in fully engaging the
spectator in the emotions which he feels for “his” Maremma.
A further painting of similar shape, of the same subject but different in composition, is illustrated in
Giancarlo Daddi’s 1973 monograph on Eugenio Cecconi 1 .
65

Charles Émile Auguste Durant called Carolus-Duran
Lille 1837-1917 Paris
20 Portrait of Marie-Anne Carolus-Duran, the Painter’s Eldest Daughter.
Oil on canvas. Signed Carolus Duran upper left and dated 77 top right.
32.5 x 24.5 cms. (12 ½ x 9 ¾ in).
Provenance : Private collection, Bordeaux.
Born in Lille to poor parents, Charles Auguste Emile Durant was befriended early on by Zacharie Astruc,
the art critic and journalist. Thanks to his friend, he came to Paris, changed his name from simple Durant
to the more glamorous, hyphenated Carolus-Duran and started attending the Académie Suisse. With a
card from the Louvre to enable him to copy Old Masters in his pocket, he concentrated on studying his
favourites, Velasquez and Goya as well as Raphael and Van Dyck. In 1862, having won the Prix Wicar
in his native Lille, he was able to travel to Italy where he stayed for four years. In 1866, he achieved
his ambition to travel to Spain and set up a studio in Toledo for the summer. From 1870, his career as a
portraitist took off thanks to the success of La Dame au Gant, (Musée d’Orsay) a portrait of his wife. He
opened two paying ateliers, one for men and one for women, which became extremely fashionable and
attracted many interesting painters of the time. John Singer Sargent started attending the atelier in 1874
(he was only eighteen) and Carolus later helped him to enter the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, admiring his great
talent. They would remain lifelong friends and Sargent always acknowledged that Carolus had taught
him two things: the importance of making numerous sketches before starting work on a painting and the
mastery of loose brushwork. Sargent painted Carolus in 1879, a work now in the Stirling and Francine
Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, and the dedication is telling: A mon cher maître M. Carolus Duran,
son élève attentionné, John S. Sargent. It shows Carolus as a sturdy, humorous and self-assured artist with
dark eyes and the Mediterranean colouring which his children all inherited.
Although Carolus-Duran is often rather mistakenly associated with more academic portraitists like
Cabanel, Hébert and Bonnat, he saw himself quite differently and in a letter to Felix Bracquemond dated
1904, he confirmed: I was a Realist and absolutely detested the Academy of our youth. His “gods” were,
in fact, Delacroix and especially Velasquez. He was also a great friend of Edouard Manet whom he met
when he came to live in Paris in 1855 and remained close to until his untimely death in 1883. Manet’s
biographer Adolphe Tabarant noted: Manet saw Carolus every day. He was one of his closest friends, one
of the very rare ones, four or five at the most, he would address as “tu”. Carolus painted his friend’s portrait
in 1877 - a work now in the , Musée d’Orsay - at the time when they both frequented the fashionable cafés,
Café Caron and the Molière on the rue de l’Odéon where Carolus also met Alphonse Legros, Whistler and
Fantin-Latour.
The exhibition held at the Palais des Beaux-Arts, Lille in 2003 1 reassessed Carolus-Duran’s place in the world
of late 19 th century French art. His reputation had suffered due to accusations that his work was insincere
simply because it was fashionable and he made money. A review of the exhibition concludes that the artist’s
portraits show his true strengths and “many of these are far removed from the static society images one would
expect to find from consulting the earlier literature”. As Emile Zola understood, Carolus-Duran was “un élève
de la nouvelle école” who leaned towards a modernist approach 2 . A remarkable study of the Paris training of
American painters published in 1991 also documented that he had taught no less than eighty-one American
painters in his studio, using the unorthodox method of both drawing and painting from the live model and
thereby being a great source of inspiration to the movement of American impressionism 3 .
On 30 th January 1868, he married the beautiful Pauline Marie Charlotte Croizette (1839-1912), also
a painter. They had three children whom he used constantly as models, with Marie-Anne, his eldest,
seemingly his favourite. He was particularly attracted by the spontaneity of his children of whom he made
many informal drawings and oil sketches. In 1889, Marie-Anne, who had turned into a dark-haired beauty,
married the playwright Georges Feydeau (1862-1921).
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67

Antonio Mancini
Rome 1852-1930
21
Portrait of Luigino Gianchetti as a Violin Player
Oil on canvas. Inscribed, signed and dated: PARIS/ A. Mancini 78.
92 x 73.5 cms. (36 x 29 in.)
Provenance: Count Albert Cahen in 1881; probably then by descent.
“I have met in Italy the greatest living painter: Antonio Mancini” so pronounced John Singer Sargent 1
whose portrait of Mancini painted some years later is now in the Galleria Nazionale, Rome. Mancini’s
talent was precocious and energetic. He studied in Naples and by 1872, was already exhibiting at the
Paris Salon. Despite being recognised for his extraordinary brilliance, particularly by his fellow painters
and a small number of connoisseurs, Mancini’s life was difficult and he never completely escaped the
privations of his childhood, suffering periods of poverty and even madness. Gladly the last years of his
life were easier, and following the end of the First World War, having settled in Rome, he worked steadily
until his death in 1930.
He is now considered to have been at the forefront of the Verismo movement as well as a supreme
technician for his innovations in the use of thick impasto, an early manifestation of which can be seen in
the treatment of brocade and fabric in the lower right corner of the present picture.
This stunning painting is a portrait of Luigino Gianchetti, called “Luigiello”. Dated 1878, it was painted
by Mancini during his second stay in Paris. The artist had arrived there in March 1877 and the following
month, the young model joined him from Naples. The painter portrays him in the role of a violinist, as
seen in the painting known as Piccolo savoiardo, executed a few years earlier.
1. Antonio Mancini, Boy Playing with Lead Soldiers, the
Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Here the boy is dressed as a saltimbanco,
with a costume in black and red, embellished
with floral decorations. The Mancini archive
holds some important documents which refer
to this work, specifically the correspondence
between the Belgian musician, Count Albert
Cahen d’Anvers, a personal friend and the
artist’s first real patron, who also introduced
him to the Parisian art world and to the wellknown
art dealer Goupil who was so crucial
to the success of the Italian artists working in
Paris. From these documents we learn that
in 1880, two years after Mancini’s return to
Naples, this picture, described as “una mezza
figura di Saltimbanco nero” remained in Paris
with this same Count Cahen. The painter asks
his friend to deliver it to Rey, another fine art
dealer in Paris, in order to pay back a debt for
canvases and paints. Cahen, however, failed to
carry out this request, since two years later he
sent Mancini 500 francs for the sale of this work.
The picture is unpublished and remained in
France till now. Its refined brushwork and
subtle air of introspection reveal it to be one
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69

of the highest achievements of Mancini’s early period. The strong contrasts of light and shade show
Mancini’s deep knowledge of 17 th century Neapolitan art which he gained from constant visits to the
churches and museums of the city. Similarly, the quality of light also refers to Caravaggio and in particular
to his David with the Head of Goliath in the Galleria Borghese in Rome, which Mancini could well have
known from his frequent visits to Rome.
The placement of the figure at the centre of the canvas, the dark background and the face bathed in light
are aspects which recur in two other paintings of the same model: the Young Bacchus in the Museo della
Scienza e della Tecnica Leonardo da Vinci in Milan and the Boy with Lead Soldiers in the Philadelphia
Museum of Art (fig.1).
Cinzia Virno
Taken from Cinzia Virno’s forthcoming Catalogo Generale dei dipinti di Antonio Mancini, to be
published by De Luca editori d’arte, Rome.
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71

Giovanni Boldini
Ferrara 1842-1931 Paris
22
The Pianist
Oil on panel. Signed, upper right: Boldini.
35.8 x 27.5 cms. (14 1 /8 x 10 ¾ in.)
Provenance: Sale, Paris, Galerie Charpentier, curated by J.L. Vaudoyer, 7 th -13 th May 1931, no.91;
Sale, Milan, 7 th November 1985, lot 95.
Literature: Ottocento, Catalogo dell’arte italiana dell’Ottocento, Milan 1986, p.166, no.15; Tiziano Panconi,
Giovanni Boldini l’opera completa, Florence 2002, p.219; P. Dini, F. Dini, Giovanni Boldini Catalogo
Ragionato della pittura a olio con un’ampia selezione di pastelli, acquarelli e disegni, Turin 2002, vol.IV,
p.515, cat.992.
Exhibited: Milan, Galleria d’arte internazionale di Milano, 1952, no.6.
Born in Ferrara, Giovanni Boldini received his training from his father Antonio. His talent was soon recognised
and, at the age of eighteen, he was already known as an accomplished portraitist. Boldini travelled to Florence
in 1862, where he formed close friendships with artists of the revolutionary movement of the Macchiaioli,
such as Giovanni Fattori, Telemaco Signorini and Silvestro Lega. An unabashed self-promoter, Boldini soon
realized that, to reach a truly international audience he would have to relocate to Paris. After a trip to London
in 1869, where he admired and assimilated the work of Gainsborough and Reynolds, in 1871, Boldini settled
in Paris, primarily, though not exclusively working for the dealer Goupil, for whom he painted landscapes and
minute, fanciful genre scenes in the manner of Meissonier. In 1874, Boldini exhibited for the first time to great
public acclaim at the Salon du Champs-de-Mars, and in the following years he travelled to Germany, where
he met Adolphe von Menzel and to Holland, further refining his style by studying the portraiture of Frans
Hals. The artist befriended society portrait painters such as Helleu and Whistler, and became a close friend
of Degas, a true admirer of his work who once said of him: “Ce diable d’italien est un monstre de talent”.
By the 1880s, Boldini had begun to paint his celebrated portraits of society beauties. With a sharp eye, bold,
virtuoso brushstrokes and typically flamboyant style, Boldini captured not only the character and vitality of
the sitter, but also the spontaneity and evanescent spirit of a magnificently decadent and sophisticated society
that had gravitated towards Paris at the end of the nineteenth century. Among his numerous portraits, those of
Giuseppe Verdi, Whistler, Consuelo Vanderbilt, the Duchess of Marlborough, Count Robert de Montesquiou,
Princess Bibesco and the Marchesa Casati, are but a few of the artist’s most famous. Indeed, by the early years
of the twentieth century, Boldini achieved the kind of success enjoyed by his friend John Singer Sargent in
London. He was a prolific and tireless painter who remained active to the end of his long life.
Tiziano Panconi dates this oil sketch to 1882-5 and makes reference to a finished depiction of Maestro
Emanuele Muzio, painted in around 1882, which had belonged to Giuseppe Verdi. 1 Muzio, with whom
Boldini was well-acquainted, acted as a link between the artist and Verdi who was both Muzio’s master and
friend. Certainly the figure playing the piano in this lively sketch, has the same powerful features, strong nose
and prominent moustache as Muzio and if him, it would make sense that the present work is a few years
later than the painting as his hair is further receded. Boldini has used a highly characteristic small panel for
this sketch, allowing the grain of the wood to show through the thin base layer of paint. An oil study of a
Gentleman Reading, dated to the same period as the present work, is on an identical panel and shows the
same treatment and technique 2 . The figures have a particularly vivid presence by virtue of the lively and
substantial brushstrokes used to describe their forms against the textured backgrounds. The scene can be
identified as having been painted in Boldini’s studio. The piano, with its large volute supporting the keyboard,
is the same as that seen in a drawing of another, different pianist and there, as here, behind the piano, the
neck of a cello is visible. An oil sketch, dated to around 1910, clearly of that same pianist, includes more of
Boldini’s studio in the scene with a large portrait of a woman propped against the wall behind the piano and
an easel in the foreground 3 .
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73

Federico Zandomeneghi
Venice 1841-1917 Paris
23
Still Life with Fruit.
Oil on canvas. Signed Zandomeneghi upper left.
27 x 34,5 cms. (10 5 /8 x 13 ½ in.)
Literature: Federico Zandomeneghi, Catalogo Generale, New Edition, Fondazione Enrico Piceni,
Scheiwiller Libri, Milan, 2006, described and reproduced in black and white under cat. 865, p. 383,
reproduced in colour p. 184.
A Venetian by birth, Federico Zandomeneghi associated with the Macchiaioli in Florence before moving
to Paris in 1874 at the age of 33, never to return to Italy. By the late 1870s he had become a habitué
of the Café de la Nouvelle-Athènes on the Place Pigalle in Montmartre, where he met and befriended
Edgar Degas. The two artists, both difficult, ill-tempered characters, were to remain lifelong friends.
Degas persuaded Zandomeneghi to exhibit at the fourth Impressionist exhibition in 1879, and the Italian
also took part in the Impressionist exhibitions of 1880, 1881 and 1886. Zandomeneghi was represented
in Paris by Paul Durand-Ruel, who showed his pastels to some acclaim in America, during the 1890s.
But he remained largely unappreciated in Italy until after his death. Indeed, when the Italian art critic
Diego Martelli visited Paris in 1878, he wrote to the painter Giovanni Fattori that Zandomeneghi’s work
belonged to “a new kind of painting whose concept and aim those at home cannot comprehend.”
Indeed, it was not until 1914 that Zandomeneghi was given his first one-man show in his native country,
at the Venice Biennale of that year.
Zandomeneghi is best known for his depiction of women; his favourite subjects were often portrayed in
the intimacy of their daily activities: from waking up in the morning to trying on a fashionable hat, or
having a conversation with a friend on a sofa. In a few of these works the colours of fabric and furnishings
were echoed by flowers and fruit adorning the interiors of houses. There are women arranging bunches of
wild flowers in vases and plates with fruit compositions in works of the 1880s and 1890s; for example in
Al Caffè Nouvelle Athène 1 , dated 1885 now in a private Collection, the couple are seated at a table with
a still life with oranges and a pear in front of them. However it was not until the first decades of the 20 th
century that Zandomeneghi dedicated himself fully to this genre. The present work can be dated to those
years and compared to a small number of still lives such as Pommes 2 , dated 1917 and now in the Traversi
collection Milan, and another Still Life of apples 3 , also dated 1917. The present work has a bold spareness
of composition which is almost severe; Zandomenighi appears to be concentrating on the volumes of the
fruit almost exluding the decorative qualities of other of his still lives. Yet, closer inspection reveals an
extremely subtle use of colour, the white tablecloth acts in strong contrast against the dark wall behind
the fruit but both foreground and background are painted with a considerable range of tones and brush
strokes thereby giving richness and luminosity to the composition.
In a letter written by Zandomeneghi to his compatriot Vittorio Pica, dated 18 th April 1916, the artist
declared: “You are right to say that in Italy, the so-called still life is considered as a frivolity and that this
stupidity we must also blame on the conceited influence of Germany which for a long time has infiltrated
the spirit and the pagan traditions of our race. Here at least the Courbets, Delacroixs, the prodigious
Manet and a hundred others have left us enduring models of superb still lives …”. This comment serves
to underline to what extent Zandomenighi was working within the hierarchy of French painting and
felt himself in tune with French artistic sensibility. In turning to still-lives he was in some sense paying
homage to the line of exceptional French painters who had devoted all or part of their careers to this
genre: Chardin, Fantin-Latour and of course, Courbet and Manet also.
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75

Edouard Vuillard
Cuiseaux 1868-1940 La Baule
24
La Couture
Oil on board. Signed in black: E. Vuillard. Laid down on card numbered in blue crayon A.3826. The
number given again on a small printed label; further inscribed on a second label, probably an exhibition
label Edouard Vuillard/ 27-La couture. A secondary backing bears the same number: A3826 in pencil and
the inscription Les Couturières/ Vuillard in pen and ink
24.4 x 17.8 cms. (9 ¾ x 7 in.)
Literature: To be included in the forthcoming supplement to the catalogue raisonné by the
Wildenstein Institute (certificate dated and numbered 12.01.2012/11549).
This intimate and subtle interior scene is emblematic of Vuillard’s early work. Brought up in Paris in a
modest apartment, Vuillard’s domestic world revolved around the dressmaking business his mother and
sister ran from home. A school friendship with the artist Ker-Xavier Roussel led him to join the studio
of Diogène Maillart from where Vuillard moved on to the Académie Julian and eventually to the Ecole
des Beaux-Arts. Most of his free time was spent in the Louvre and a surviving journal of 1888 shows
that he principally studied the works of Chardin and 17 th century Dutch interiors and still-lives. In 1889
Vuillard, encouraged by his fellow-student Maurice Denis, joined a small group of dissident art students
calling themselves the Nabis (meaning prophets in Hebrew). All impecunious and highly serious, they were
inspired by the example of Gauguin and their aim was to rely on memory and imagination in their paintings
rather than observation. Vuillard began to experiment using oils on small pieces of board, presumably
the only supports he could afford, and taking his immediate environment as his subject. He developed a
method of combining colour and hue to create a dense pattern-like surface. By 1892 Vuillard had turned
to family themes, “intimiste” scenes which again and again featured his mother and sister, at work or still,
and always in interior settings. Vuillard’s intense relationship with his family was heightened when he
brought Xavier Roussel into their world encouraging his friend to court and then marry his sister Marie. The
present work, which dates from exactly these years suggests a withdrawal from the real world, the figures
have their faces turned from both the viewer and the artist. Another, similar work from the same period,
known as La Causette - the chat - is in the National Gallery of Scotland. It shows Vuillard’s mother and sister
seated against separate walls of a small, low ceilinged room and appears to suggest the moments before
Marie’s marriage, as she is advised by her mother. Powerful in their concentration, these small paintings
have an extraordinary atmosphere. In the present work, this intensity is underscored by Vuillard’s brilliant
use of colour: he depicts a corner of the family apartment with its French windows, diminutive pictures,
wallpapers, a jardinière on the corner of a bureau and on the table a sewing basket with a little spark
of colour, as red fabric spills out. The subdued base colours, a green brown floor, brown dress and grey
tablecloth are lit with splashes of acidic lemon yellow, the material Marie is sewing and the yellow skirting
board. This colour appears to have been particularly important to the Nabis painters during these years.
Marie herself has an evanescence leant by Vuillard’s use of a relief, empty of paint, around her outline
Abstracted but also strangely precise, we understand the detail: the stripes in Mme. Vuillard’s dress and her
voluminous, heavy skirt visible under the table, her silent concentration and behind her a net curtain across
the French window and a dark-leaved tree outside. Works on a similar scale and comparable in subject,
mood and tonality all date from the early 1890s: For example Mère et Fille à Table (private collection), La
Ravaudeuse (Musée d’Orsay), Marie penchée sur son ouvrage, a painting in the Yale University Art Gallery,
New Haven and La Ravaudeuse aux chiffons in the Indianapolis Museum of Art and, most similar in colour,
the Repas de famille in the Metropolitan Museum of Art which is signed and dated: ev 93 1 .
The numbering in blue on the old backing appears to be a form of systematic numbering. Another oil on
board also titled La Couture, (catalogue raisonné IV-140), is numbered in the same manner, A-3690 and
also dates from 1893.
76

actual size
77

Giovanni Boldini
Ferrara 1842-1931 Paris
25
Berthe Smoking (La sigarette)
Oil on panel. signed and dated Boldini 74 at lower left.
67 x 55 cms. (26 ¼ x 21 ¾ in.)
Provenance: Galerie Georges Petit, sale Catalogue de tableaux modernes composant la collection de
M. V., 3 rd May 1892, n°3, illustrated p. 7; Private Collection.
Literature: Carlo L. Ragghianti & Ettore Camesasca, L’opera completa di Boldini, n° 19, illustrated p.
91; Bianca Doria, Giovanni Boldini, Catalogo generale dagli Archivi Boldini, Rizzoli, Milano 2000, n°60;
Francesca Dini, Piero Dini, Giovanni Boldini 1842-1931: catalogo ragionato, Allemandi, Torino, 2002,
vol. 3, n° 175, p. 106, Illustrated.
Born in Ferrara, Giovanni Boldini received his training from his father Antonio, a painter of religious
subject. His talent was soon recognized and, at the age of eighteen, he was already known in his native
town as an accomplished portraitist. Boldini travelled to Florence in 1862, where he formed close
friendships with artists of the revolutionary movement of the Macchiaioli, such as Giovanni Fattori,
Telemaco Signorini and Silvestro Lega. An astute businessman and unabashed self-promoter, Boldini
soon realized that, to reach a truly international audience he would have to relocate to Paris, a city
which was fast becoming the nucleus for the European artistic scene and also the economic focus for
the leading dealers of the day. After a trip to London in 1869, where he asmired and assimilated the
work of Gainsborough and Reynolds, in 1871, Boldini settled in the French capital, primarily though
not exclusively for the dealer, Goupil, like several other Italian artists such as De Nittis, Zandomeneghi
and Mancini, and for whom he painted landscapes and minute, essentially fanciful genre scenes in the
manner of Meissonier. In 1874, Boldini exhibited for the first time to great public acclaim at the Salon du
Champs-de-Mars, and in the following years he travelled to Germany, where he met Adolphe von Menzel
and to Holland, further refining his style by studying the portraiture of Frans Hals. The artist befriended
other society portrait painters such as Paul-César Helleu and James A. McNeill Whistler, and became a
close friend of Degas who truly admired his work and once said of his friend: “Ce diable d’italien est un
monstre de talent”. By the 1880’s, Boldini had begun to paint his celebrated portraits of society beauties.
With a sharp eye, bold, virtuoso brushstrokes and typically flamboyant style, Boldini captured not only
the character and vitality of the sitter, but also the spontaneity and evanescent spirit of a magnificently
decadent and sophisticated society that had gravitated towards Paris in the last decade of the nineteenth
century. Among his numerous portraits, those of Giuseppe Verdi, Whistler, Consuelo Vanderbilt, the
Duchess of Marlborough, Count Robert de Montesquiou, Princess Bibesco and the Marchesa Casati, are
but a few of the artist’s most famous sitters. Indeed, by the early years of the twentieth century, Boldini had
become the most fashionable portrait painter of Belle Époque Paris, achieving the kind of success enjoyed
by his friend, John Singer Sargent in London. He had a self confessed love of high society, champagne
and elegant ladies but was a prolific and tireless painter who remained active to the end of his long life,
though in the last few years, failing eyesight meant he restricted himself to working in charcoal. In 1929,
aged 86, he married for the first time; at his wedding speech, with charismatic wit, he said: “It is not my
fault if I am so old, its something which has happened to me all at once”. 1
Until its recent reappearance from a private collection, this superb panel was only know through a black
and white photograph. In pristine state of preservation, it can now be fully appreciated in its glittering
colours and vibrant palette, so typical of Boldini’s great virtuosity. The sitter is Berthe, a young dressmaker,
who became the artist’s first Parisian model, as well as his lover for over a decade. In Berthe, Boldini
found the quintessential elements of the modern Parisian woman. She was an exquisite and beautifully
dressed model, with a capricious personality. Her elegance was characterised by her gentle ways and her
78

79

light voice. She could be playful and lighthearted, energetic and enthusiastic, but never vulgar. Berthe
was ideal for the artist’s descriptive yet nervous technique, all charm and sensuality, his dazzling colours
and light brush strokes, and in fact Boldini portrayed her in numerous paintings, in interiors as well as in
out-of-doors settings.
The painting was executed in 1874, when the artist had a lucrative contract with the art dealer Adolphe
Goupil, producing small-scale pictures on panel or canvas depicting elegantly dressed men and women
in preciously and often overly decorated 18 th century and Empire interiors, comfortably seated on silk
settees, reading a book or playing the piano, or simply in conversation, as well as out-of-doors, enjoying
a stroll in a park or resting on a bench, smelling a flower in a garden or tasting an afternoon drink at
a café terrace. In these 18 th century rocaille revivals of artists such as Watteau and Fragonard, Boldini,
probably to please the commercial needs of the Maison Goupil, did not hesitate to seek inspiration
from Mariano Fortuny and Meissonnier, whose works illustrated scenes from France’s past periods of
wealth and prominence. These scenes were highly sought after by collectors who, faced with the harsher
realities of modern 19 th century society, were eager to acquire works that suggested a gentler life style,
expensive clothes and fine furnishings.
In this painting, however, Boldini seems to have forsaken the richly decorated wallpapers of his interiors,
and chosen a barren and almost rough wall. As a result, the spectator’s eye is concentrated on the
protagonist of the painting, thew beautifully sensual Berthe. Her distracted look and relaxed posture,
as she sits, smoking, such details as the folds of the carpet probably caused by the sudden motion of
her feet, as well as the paint brush and the pieces of torn paper abandoned on the floor, give the scene
a sense of familiarity and intimacy which is unusual and suggests that this panel fwas not intended for
the Goupil market. In fact, this picture is not listed in the Goupil archives among the works which his
gallery handled. Other props such as the two shiny ceramic plates hanging on the wall, the heavy rocaille
frame, the Japanese hat and mask and the curtain hanging high above the door frame seem to have been
positioned for the occasion with a theatrical intention rather than belonging on the otherwise plain wall.
80

actual size detail
81

Otto Friedrich
Raab 1862-1937 Vienna
26
Scherzo, from the Rhythms Cycle for the Vestibule of a Music Room
Tempera on canvas. Signed, inscribed with title and dated Wien 1913 on the reverse of the canvas.
100 x 100 cms. (39 3 /8 x 39 3 /8 in.)
Provenance: Private Collection, Sweden.
Exhibited: Vienna, Secession, 1913: XLIV Ausstellung der Vereinigung Bildender Künstler Österreichs.
Literature: Vienna, Secession, 1913: XLIV Ausstellung der Vereinigung Bildender Künstler Österreichs,
catalogue. Die Kunst, Monatshefte für freie und angewandte Kunst, volume XXVII, Munich, 1913, p. 415;
Leon Trotsky, Vienna Secession 1913, published in the Kievskaya Mysl, nos 171 and 172, Kiev, 23 rd and
24 th June 1913; Thieme Becker, Allgemeines Lexicon der Bildenden Künstler, vol II, pp. 473-474.
Surprisingly little is known of Friedrich’s life. After an early and successful career as a history painter,
Friedrich settled permanently in Vienna in 1894, and in 1897, along with Gustav Klimt, Koloman Moser,
Josef Hoffmann and others became a founding member of the Vienna Secession. He contributed regularly
to Ver Sacrum, its official journal, and occasionally designed posters for the group (fig.1). In Rudolf Bacher’s
famous drawing, Friedrich is one of only a handful present to greet the Emperor Franz Joseph on the
latter’s visit to the curious onion domed building off the Ring. In his everyday life he worked as a teacher
at the Wiener Frauenakademie, an art school for women founded in 1893.
So little now remains of Friedrich’s work that it would seem much of it was destroyed, by accident or design.
This painting and its companion are fortunately survivors belonging to a series of five of which two
still remain undiscovered. They belong to his most
well documented work, a cycle of pictures on musical
themes to be hung in the antechamber of a
music-room. According to Thieme-Becker, “His
work developed increasingly in a decorative direction,
finding expression in the composition, the
combination of colours and line, as well as striving
for the association with the applied arts. This
can be seen in all of his work, as for example in
his decorative cycle “Rhythms” for a music room
(exhibited at the Secession in 1913)…” 1 The cycle
certainly seems to have made an impression on
the public. By chance, the Bolshevik revolutionary
Leon Trotsky, who was living in Vienna in exile at
the time, visited the exhibition at the Secession in
1913, and was so moved by these paintings that
he wrote about them.
1. Otto Friedrich, Poster for the XXXIII Secession
Exhibition in Vienna in 1909.
“I visited the spring Vienna Secession only at the
end of June, almost on the eve of its closure. Apart
from myself, some family excursion from Galicia
wandered around the halls: a Polish gentleman,
ladies and their children…They were very noisy,
all ate sweets and in general behaved as if they
were in the Gerngross department store. (…) As
always, there were interesting works at the Secession
this time.
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83

Otto Friedrich’s ‘Cycle of Rhythms’ occupies a room of its own, and should adorn the entrance to a music
room. It is difficult to state the ‘content’ of pictures in general, and especially of those where paint and
lines are meant to serve as the embodiment, not of painted, but of musical images, or more correctly,
combine one with the other. Is this task legitimate in general? One can argue about this as much as one
likes. But Otto Friedrich has shown that he has done this legitimately, for it is aesthetically convincing. His
growing collection of nude figures on five canvasses: nebulous and touching children’s bodies, supple
adolescent bodies, nobly passionate women’s bodies, and strong intense men’s bodies, despite the complexity
of the composition, speak in a language of clear and pure harmony…the ‘rhythms’ of Friedrich
are not replaced by conventional signs, but directly inspire the viewer with the inner rhythmicality of the
depiction itself, the harmony of line and colour.” 2
It is really therefore thanks to Trotsky, of all people, that we know that there were originally five canvases,
as the 1913 Secession catalogue only mentions that they are a series. Painted in tempera on canvas, in
the square format beloved by the Jugendstil, the pictures are given Italian names denoting musical terms.
The association of colour, line and music is one that fascinated many artists at the beginning of the twentieth
century, and led painters such as Kandinsky to pure abstraction. The artists of the Vienna Secession,
however, had their feet firmly rooted in a kind of heroic classicism, and in his Rhythm series - as Trotsky
was quick to point out - Friedrich expresses his abstract musical idea by graceful and harmonic combination
of colour and line, in a fluid yet precisely drawn figurative idiom equal in quality and spirit to his
colleagues Klimt and Schiele.
Otto Friedrich’s inscription on the reverse
of the canvas.
84

85

Otto Friedrich
Raab 1862-1937 Vienna
27
Fugato from the Rhythms Cycle for the Vestibule of a Music Room
Tempera on canvas. Signed, inscribed with title and dated Wien 1913 on the reverse of the canvas.
100 x 100 cms. (39 3 /8 x 39 3 /8 in.)
Provenance: Private Collection, Sweden.
Exhibited: Vienna, Secession, 1913: XLIV Ausstellung der Vereinigung Bildender Künstler Österreichs.
Literature: Vienna, Secession, 1913: XLIV Ausstellung der Vereinigung Bildender Künstler Österreichs,
catalogue. Die Kunst, Monatshefte für freie und angewandte Kunst, volume XXVII, Munich, 1913, p. 415;
Leon Trotsky, Vienna Secession 1913, published in the Kievskaya Mysl, nos 171 and 172, Kiev, 23 rd and
24 th June 1913; Thieme Becker, Allgemeines Lexicon der Bildenden Künstler, vol II, pp. 473-474.
2. Otto Friedrich, Poster for the 50 th Secession
Exhibition in Vienna in 1918.
86

87

88

A Unique Assembly of
101 Terracotta Modelli
by
Jacques-Edme Dumont
(1761-1844)
89

Jacques-Edme Dumont
Paris 1761-1844
28
A Unique Assembly of 101 Terracotta Modelli displayed in a Printers Typecase.
The figures measuring between 7 and 10 cms. (2 ¾ x 4 in.).
The entire case measuring 68 x 46.5 cms. (26 ¾ x 18 ¼ in.)
Provenance: By descent through the artist’s family.
Jacques-Edme Dumont was born on 10 th April 1761 into a family of artists, comprising five generations
of sculptors. The details of this family were recorded by the art lover and historian Guy Vattier, who lived
towards the end of the 19 th century 1 . Vattier conscientiously compiled and recorded the lives of each
member and his work is the most comprehensive source of information about Jacques-Edme Dumont,
whose achievements are somewhat overshadowed in the literature by those of his father 2 . Jacques-Edme’s
artistic production can be tracked through the records of the Salons, in which he exhibited frequently
during the 1790s. A further source for documenting his work is the 1900 exhibition L’exposition centennale
de l’art français which sheds light on the artist’s prolific production of terracottas 3 .
Jacques-Edme’s father, Edme Dumont (1720-1775), was a pupil of Edme Bouchardon (1698-1762) and
nephew of Charles-Antoine Coypel, First Painter to the King and director of the Academy who, according
to Vattier, had married François Berthault, granddaughter of the Locksmith to the King. Jacques-Edme
himself married Marie Elizabeth Louise Curton on 7 th November 1806 4 and their son Auguste-Alexandre
Dumont (1801-1884) became well-known for the government commissions he received under the
Empire, such as the Spirit of Liberty on the July column or the sculpture topping the Vendôme column.
Auguste made a portrait of his father in 1820, the current location of which is unknown. Jacques-Edme’s
own career began at the age of 14 in the studio of Auguste Pajou (1730-1809), who was a close friend of
his father’s. He became one of Pajou’s favourite pupils, as is witnessed by a significant correspondence
between the master and his charge, especially during the period when Dumont was living in Italy. After
winning the first prize for sculpture at the Academy in 1788, for a marble relief of The Death of Tarquin,
Dumont went on to complete his training at the French Academy in Rome, where he remained until
1793 5 . In letters to his mother, Dumont described the enormous effect this study of Antiquity was having
on his work 6 . Like his master, Pajou, Dumont’s sculptures demonstrated his assimilation of the Ancients
but notwithstanding this, he did develop a personal style. In 1789 whilst in
Rome Dumont made a reduced marble copy of the Antique original, Cleopatra,
also known as Ariane 7 . An extremely detailed - despite being tiny - study
in terracotta of the same figure reversed appears in this group.
While the Salons were disallowed after the Revolution, the Convention
instead set up a series of competitions in which Dumont played an active
rôle. Nevertheless, the period following his return to Paris, during the severe
post-Revolution years, was generally difficult. In order to get through this time
of crisis, like many other artists, Dumont started to work on a small scale 9 ,
making models for statuettes moulded in bronze, gold, silver and even porcelain,
and promoting his small groups of terracotta figures as works ideal for
collectors and amateurs to display in their salons. The present collection most
probably belongs to exactly this transitional time and illustrates Dumont’s
ability to move between the two styles of the bombastic and heroic on the
one hand and of the intimate and refined on the other. A few years later, his
grandest classical style showed itself to be ideally suited to the new Republican
ethos and Dumont went on to receive a number of commissions from the
Imperial regime, including the bust of General Marceau, which was exhibited
at the reinstated Salon of 1801, as part of a larger project commissioned by
E.J. Dumont, actual size. Napoleon to celebrate the generals of the Revolution. Dumont also created
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91

1. J. E. Dumont, Paris, The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York.
2. J. E.Dumont, Hebe and Jupiter, Musée du Louvre, Paris.
an entire figure of Marceau, in plaster, for the façade of the Luxembourg palace, for which the Louvre has
a model in terracotta 8 , and another fine free standing sculpture known as Le Sapeur made for the Arc du
Carrousel du Louvre in 1808.
Dumont very frequently portrayed classical figures in his small terracottas – such as Diana and Venus.
Less rounded and sensual than the similarly inspired works by artists of the succeeding generation, such
as, for example, Maurice-Etienne Falconet (1716-1791), Dumont’s figures are sharply drawn with simplified
outlines, an almost geometric approach which recalls the schematic drawings of his fellow student
Anne Louis Girodet de Trioson 10 .
A close study of the Salon lists reveals that some models from this present collection may have been
preparatory for Dumont’s Salon entries of the 1780s and 1790s. The study of a naked woman drying her
long hair compares closely with a figure on show at the 1796 Salon 13 , along with a bathing woman 14 , and
these may be the same figures which were sold at an auction in Paris in 1989 15 , where the Metropolitan
Museum, New York and the Louvre bought some very fine pieces by Dumont (figs.1 and 2).
During periods of political turmoil and upheaval, the continuing support of collectors and art lovers
greatly aided struggling sculptors threatened by the lack of public commissions for large scale works 16 .
From the beginning of the 18th Century, morceaux d’agrément had begun to be successful at the Salons,
and the Academy too was enthusiastic in its promotion of small scale statuettes made of marble as
well as terracotta. Later in the 19th century Dumont’s work found a number of enthusiasts such as the
architect, Paul-René-Léon Ginian 17 (1825-1898) of whom there is a photograph showing him standing
in front of a book case, crowded with terracottas of various sizes (fig.3). Ginian married the widow of
August-Alexandre Dumont and may therefore have inherited part of Jacques-Edme Dumont’s studio.
Another architect, Hector Lefuel (1810-1880) also collected Dumont’s models, as did the Duchess de
Galliera and a Dr. Cayeux who owned a small number of pieces which came from Ginian’s collection,
and are now in the Louvre.
Taking into account the miniature size of these figures and their masterfully fluent, sketch-like nature,
92

3. Paul Ginian standing in front of a bookcase crowded with terracottas by Edmé-Jacques Dumont. Photograph,
Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Paris.
it may be imagined that they represent the very first stage of Dumont’s creative process, made for the
sculptor’s own use and not for sale or public display. They are perhaps a repertory for Dumont to record
his experiments with theme and form; hence there are a number of figures of Venus for example as well
as of Mary Magdalen. In his book on the Dumont family of artists, Vattier records he words of Dumont’s
son, who describes their execution: ‘It is a childhood memory: I see it still, rue de Bagneux, papa Mont,
as we called him in the family, seated in an armchair, a night cap pulled down to his eyebrows … holding
between his thumb and index finger a cork which served as the support, on which he modelled
those figurines which lacked nothing in detail despite being, for the most part, only five or six centimetres
high 18 . It is also possible that some of the figures record sculptures by Dumont which later disappeared,
during the destructive period of the 1871 Commune. The fragility of these tiny modelli, with their delicate
but highly expressive character, makes it all the more remarkable that they have survived as such an
assembly, thanks chiefly to the ingenious and artful manner in which the artist’s printer descendent has
preserved and displayed the collection.
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94

Drawings
95

Baccio Della Porta, Called Fra Bartolommeo
Florence 1472-1517 Pian di Mugnone
29
Head of a Friar wearing a Cowl, seen in three-quarter Profile
Black chalk and stumping, heightened with white chalk, with a partial outline in red-brown chalk. The
sheet made up at the top left and right corners and edges. Partly laid down.
242 x 200 mm. (9 ½ x 7 7 /8 in.)
Provenance: Sir Thomas Lawrence (L.2445); Samuel Woodburn; from whom purchased by The Prince
of Orange (1792-1849), who became King William II of the Netherlands in October 1840, thence by
descent (sale, Amsterdam, de Vries, C.F. Roos and J.A. Brondgeest, 12 th -19 th August 1850, Catalogue des
Tableaux Anciens et Modernes de diverses écoles, dessins et statues, formant la Galerie de feu Sa Majesté
Guillaume II, lot 74, Raphael, Etude de moine. Cette belle page est éxécutée avec soin, à la pierre d’Italie.
to Mr. Roos, as agent).
Literature: Mssrs. S. and W. Woodburn, A Catalogue of drawings by the Old Masters in the possession
of Sir Thomas Lawrence, P.R.A., at the time of his death (7 th January 1830) [manuscript] made in the
presence of Mr. Keightley [Lawrence’s executor] in 1834, presented by A. Keightley to the Art Library of
the South Kensington Museum in 1869, p.49, under Raffaelle, in Case 5 Drawer 2, no.310 (as Portrait of
the Monk Savonarola [sic] black/chalk very fine; Johann David Passavant, Rafael von Urbino und sein
Vater Giovanni Santi, Leipzig 1858, cat.68, Monchskofp. Er ist mit einer Kutte bedeekt, von schonem
Charakter, links abwars sehen. Irrigerweise ist diesem Bildniss der Name des Savonarola beigelegt
worden. In schwarzer Kreide in Rafael’s florentiner Manier ausgefuhrt, aber sehr uberarbeitet. Aus den
Sammlungen Woodburn, Lawrence. Kat. Nr.74.
Gekauft fon Hrn. Roos. X. um 380 FL.; Johann
David Passavant, Raphael d’Urbin et son père
Giovanni Santi, Paris 1860, vol. II, Catalogue
des Dessins de Raphael/ Anciennes Collections
Dispersées/ Dans la Collection Appartenant
au Feu Roi Guillaume II/ Vendue à La Haye, au
mois d’août 1850: pp.) Tête de moine, couverte
d’un ca- puchon. - Le regard dirigé vers le côté
gauche. On prétendu, sans aucun fondement,
que ce portrait était celui de Savonarola. Beau
dessin à la pierre noire, mais très retouché.
No.74. Collection Lawrence. Acquis par M.
Roos, 380 florins.
1. After Fra Bartolomeo, whereabouts unknown, formerly
in the collections of Sr. P. Roupell and Sir John Charles
Robinson (as Fra Bartolomeo).
Bartolommeo della Porta, known as Baccio,
was born a few miles from Florence; his mother
died soon after his birth but his father, who was
a mule driver, remarried and a few years later
was able to buy a house at the entrance gate to
Florence known as La Porta a S. Piero Gattolino.
At the age of eleven or twelve Bartolommeo
was apprenticed to Cosimo Rosselli and about
six years later he joined forces with Mariotto
Albertinelli and set up his own workshop at
the family house which, according to Vasari,
is how he came to be known as Baccio della
Porta 1 . In the early years of the 1490s, as
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Bartolommeo was establishing his career, Florence was in political turmoil; Lorenzo il Magnifico died in
1492, Savonarola, as Prior of the Convent of San Marco was fomenting dissent and religious radicalism.
By 1494, the Medici had been exiled and the following year, a parliamentary assembly known as the
Gran Consiglio was established. Barlotommeo was pious and encouraged by Savonarola burnt “all the
drawings of nudes that he had made by way of studies” 2 . When the faction known as the Arrabiati (the
angry ones) stormed the Convent of San Marco in order to arrest Savonarola, Bartolommeo was amongst
the five hundred or so who attempted a defence of the building. Bartolommeo emerged from this violent
episode and the subsequent burning of Savonarola determined him to take Holy Orders and in 1500 was
accepted as a novice at the Dominican convent in Prato. Vasari records that Bartolommeo forsook his
paintbrush at this time, causing much sorrow and displeasure to his friends and admirers who felt the loss
both of his company and his Art.
In the same year as he took his solemn vows, 1504, having moved to the convent of San Marco, Fra
Bartolommeo seems to have relinquished his moratorium on painting. Most probably this was at the
behest of his Prior, Sante Pagnini, who wished to reanimate the artistic life of the Convent which had
been so profoundly active during the time of Fra Angelico (1436-1445). Sante Pagnini appears to have
acted as his mentor and even manager, suggesting iconography and drawing up contracts. During this
period, Florence had re-invented itself as a centre for artistic innovation with both Leonardo da Vinci
and Michelangelo at work in the Palazzo della Signoria 3 . Apart from a fascination with Leonardo’s use
of sfumato, Fra Bartolommo’s interests were more in sympathy with the work of the young Raphael,
Perugino’s pupil, who also arrived in Florence at around this time. Chris Fischer, in his monographic
exhibition, traced the progress to be seen in Fra Bartolommeo’s drawings, from finely worked linear
studies in pen and ink - focusing on the graceful arrangement of figures and their drapery - to larger, freer
works in soft black chalk, through which the artist examined volume, light and movement. 4 In, or around
1508, following a visit to Venice, Fra Bartolommeo resumed his old partnership with Albertinelli which
allowed for increased production and coincided with the departure from the city of Leonardo, Raphael
and Michelangelo. The Convent of San Marco had by then established sufficiently good relations with
the Republican government, led by Piero Soderini, for Fra Bartolommeo to be awarded the commission
for the altarpiece destined for the Sala del Gran Consiglio 5 .
His particular combination of uncourtliness and orderly devotion suited the anti-aristocratic aims of the
Republic and encouraged commissions from the increasingly cultured mercantile class who formed the
basis of Florentine prosperity. But when the Medici swept back into power in September of 1512 Fra
Bartolommeo was suddenly out of favour. An alternative circle of painters became popular, gathered
around Andrea del Sarto. With a degree of determination and political acumen, he appears to have
begun to look beyond Florence for further commissions. He travelled to Rome and had some success in
restoring good relations with the establishment through the pro-Florentine leanings of the Pope and his
entourage, but seems to have returned to Florence due to ill-health. Working for another three years, Fra
Bartolommeo’s energies clearly re-kindled and he continued to concentrate on altarpieces and devotional
paintings but his unexpected death curtailed work on his only known pagan work, a Feast of Venus
commissioned by the Duke of Ferrara. 6 Most famous for the qualities in his work of restraint, classical
order and gentle piety, Fra Bartolommeo is considered as an archetypal High Renaissance artist working
in a highly religious idiom. As is usual, however, with such limiting art-historical terms, this description
obscures the manner in which Fra Bartolommeo studied the world around him and developed his art
accordingly.
Such powerful and expressive early 16 th century portrait drawings as this are extremely rare survivors in
the present day. Fra Bartolommeo’s head of a monk in contemplation is a study of extraordinary depth and
feeling, uniquely expressive of his great skill as a portraitist and subtle mastery of the black chalk medium.
The fact that this sheet was considered as Raphael’s by the connoisseurs Lawrence, Woodburn and
Passavant of course highlights its great quality but also suggests a dating close to the time when Raphael
and Fra Bartolommeo were together in Florence, prior to Raphael’s departure in 1508. Unpublished since
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1860, Passavant was the last scholar to discuss the drawing until it was recently seen and its attribution
to Fra Bartolommeo confirmed by Chris Fischer, the leading specialist on the artist. A fascinating echo of
this reattribution, is the existence of an early copy, previously in the eminent collections of R.P. Roupell
and Sir John Charles Robinson, which bears a faint black chalk inscription in French, probably early 19 th
century: Savonarola par fra Bartolommeo (fig.1). The copy was sold from both these collections as by Fra
Bartolommeo, first as “the Head of a Monk” and second, as “Portrait of the Artist”. 7 The very existence
of the copy is another tribute to the significance of the present drawing but it may also suggest that the
authorship of the original was once clearly known. The recurring mis-identification of Savanarola could
be merely a question of the hood, a common aspect of actual representations of the infamous monk
whose angular features are extremely different to the gentle but sturdy face depicted. 8 The copy is drawn
on a somewhat larger piece of paper, though the head itself must be of the same dimensions; this may
reflect the original scale of the present sheet.
In his catalogue of the drawings by Fra Bartolommeo in the Museum Boymans-Van Beuningen, Rotterdam
- Fra Bartolommeo Master Draughtsman of the High Renaissance - Chris Fischer describes the process
whereby Fra Bartolommeo’s reputation as one of the handful of great artists of the High Renaissance fell at
the beginning of the twentieth century and how his rehabilitation was given impetus by a revived interest
in his drawings, which in Fischer’s words are “some of the most beautiful ever made” 9 . The Rotterdam
drawings by Fra Bartolommeo, which were bound in two albums, share the same Lawrence provenance as
the present work and were also bought from Lawrence’s agents, the Woodburns, by the Prince of Orange.
Fra Bartolommeo is described as a “ceaseless producer of drawings” the great majority of which were
made for specific projects. The present work cannot be linked to a known painting or fresco; no such head
appears in any of the altarpieces of the Virgin with Saints, nor can it be found amongst Fra Bartolommeo’s
paintings depicting monks, sainted or otherwise. The refinement and substance of the drawing clearly
defines this sheet as the portrait of a real sitter, probably showing someone of importance to the artist,
unidealised, untransformed and deeply observed; it is obvious to think of Sante Pagnini. As such, it is
extremely rare, if not unique, in the Frate’s work; in Chris Fischer’s words, “Most of Fra Bartolommeo’s
portrait drawings were functional…. Renderings of specific types suitable for the idealisation that was a
fundamental element in the Frate’s compositions...”. For the most part also, these other portraits are in red
chalk and on a much smaller scale but they do date from a similar period, around 1510, see for example
the Studies of the Heads of Two Dominican Friars, with Jean-Luc Baroni in 2011 10 and the Two Studies of
the Head of a Friar, Hands and a Figure of the Virgin in the Museum Boymans van Beuningen. 11 It is also
not inconceivable that the present portrait studies the same friar as the Rotterdam sheet; they share many
features: the full lower lip, heavy jowls, long nose, wide creases, slightly doubled chin and straggling
eyebrow and remnants of hair. In the present work, however, Fra Bartolommeo used time and empathy -
the sitter must surely be reading - to make a profoundly moving and intensely lifelike depiction of a man
he clearly greatly revered, a magisterial portrait drawing possibly intended as a gift.
In his discussion of the studies of heads, Fischer goes on to describe tendencies towards greater naturalism
among the painters of the younger generation and seeing this as perceptible too in Fra Bartolommeo’s
later work from around 1515. At this time, also, Fra Bartolommeo appears to have made a number of
drawings of friends and fellow artists, with “a new immediacy and vitality”. Most of these are large and
many of them mix red and black chalk with breadth and freedom; certain ones such as the two heads
of an old and a young woman, can be linked to paintings, in that case the Madonna della Misericordia,
now in the Villa Guinigi, Lucca (commissioned around 1515) 12 . These are quite different, however, in
technique and atmosphere to the present work. More comparable in terms of scale and atmosphere
though much less finished, is the Study for the Head of a Friar 13 which was used in an idealised form
for the God the Father in the altarpiece of 1509, God the Father, St Mary Magdalen and St. Catherine of
Sienna, now also in the Pinacoteca di Villa Guinigi, Lucca. This comparison, once again with the work
of the end of the first decade of the 16 th century, is also consistent with Fra Bartolommeo’s use at that
time of soft black chalk heightened with white, and on occasion, a form of sfumato; the series of figure
100

studies for the aforementioned Lucca painting are particularly “smoky” 15 . This technique is also seen in
the contemporaneous work of Raphael.
Vasari records that the two artists spent considerable time together in the period just before Raphael
left for Rome: in the life of Fra Bartolommeo “Raphaello was always in his company” and in that of
Raphael: “While he was living in Florence, Raffaello… became very intimate with Fra Bartolommeo di
San Marco, being much pleased with his colouring, and taking no little pains to imitate it: and in return
he taught that good father the principles of perspective, to which up to that time the monk had not given
any attention.” 15 It is clear that the influence was reciprocal between them and surely drawing is what
they would have done most of in each other’s company: Raphael’s use of sfumato, “tonal modelling” as
Hugo Chapman calls it, is visible in cartoons of this period; that for St. Catherine of 1507 (now in the
Louvre) and the study of St. Paul for the Disputa (1508-9), now in the Ashmolean are examples which
were included recently in the exhibition Raphael, from Urbino to Rome, for the manner in which they
demonstrate the effect that Florence had on Raphael’s art, through Leonardo and also through ”the
atmospheric black and white studies of Fra Bartolommeo”. 16 The present drawing has a very particular
technique, more highly concentrated and precise than seen in the Frate’s compositional figure studies
using the two chalks. Here, there are broad black chalk outlines and a combination of broad and very
fine hatching with rubbing of the chalk to soften the modelling and white chalk, also rubbed in, for the
highlights of nose, cheekbones, chin and the lightest parts of the hood. It is surely this parity of technique,
if not of structural style, which led Lawrence, Woodburn and even Passavant to consider this remarkable
head to be by Raphael. 17
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North Italian School, 16 Th Century
30
A Dromedary
Pen and brown ink. Inscribed with a number: 28. Bears a watermark: crescent moons within a cross and a
circle, see Heawood 882 (Rome 1555)
278 x 407 mm. (11 x 16 in.)
Despite its lifelike quality, this fascinating and recently discovered study of a dromedary must be based
upon a lost drawing. Two other versions, also dating from the 16 th century and of same technique, are in
the British Museum 1 and the Royal Library at Windsor 2 . A. Venturi and A.E Popham considered the Windsor
drawing to be by Pisanello and the British Museum drawing to be a copy after it. The three drawings
are very alike in scale and of considerable size but are definitely not tracings as both the sheets and the
measurements of the three dromedaries are different.
A study of a similar dromedary, again given to Pisanello, this time reaching its head down to the ground
as if to drink, drawn in metalpoint, heightened with pen and brown ink on vellum, but much smaller in
dimensions (153 x 185 mm) is in the Musée du Louvre 3 . This latter attribution appears to be secure but the
scale of the present work and its Windsor and British Museum fellows, as well as the solidity and accuracy
of the depictions suggest that the original may in fact belong to another sphere, most likely that of Gentile
Bellini. Thanks to Martin Clayton and Hugo Chapman, a direct comparison of the three drawings was made
possible and demonstrated clearly that the Windsor drawing is the earliest and most finely drawn of the three
and therefore, plausibly the closest to the original work. The Windsor sheet bears a watermark associated
with the 1520s in Venice but as an extremely similar camel appears in the background of Pinturicchio’s
Cavalcade of the Magi in the Cappella Bella, Santa Maria Maggiore at Spello, which was painted in around
1501, it may be established that the original study must be earlier than that 4 . These drawings are unlikely to
have been copied from Pisanello’s camel as that one has a double hump - on which is perched a monkey -
as well as differences in details of the neck. 5
Gentile Bellini travelled to Constantinople from Venice in 1479, as a cultural ambassador, on the request
of Sultan Mehmed II. Venice had consistently favoured accommodation with the Muslim world in order to
protect her trade links and the Lagoon had long been full of exotic imports from the near and far East, including
animals. Relatively little of Gentile’s Ottoman work survives: the portrait of Sultan Mehmed in the National
Gallery London, and the series of almost anthropological drawings of court figures are the most famous 6 , but
the fascination with the east was disseminated by him on his return to Venice and by artists working in his style
such as Giovanni Mansueti and the Bellini follower responsible for the painting illustrating The Reception of
the Venetian Ambassadors in Damascus, (probably 1513-16) now in the Louvre 7 . Bellini’s St Mark preaching
in Alexandria, (a painting now in the Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan, probably completed by his brother Giovanni)
and the Procession in Piazza San Marco in the Accademia depict, with immense accuracy, figures in Mamluk
and Ottoman costume, both men and women and, in the background of the St Mark painting exotic animals
stroll: two camels and a huge giraffe, while the Venetian Ambassadors picture shows camels, a monkey and a
pair of deer 8 . The present sheet and its associated drawings show an extraordinary level of detail: the realistic
expression of the beast with drooping eye and lower lip, the slight bagginess of the extended neck, the rather
luxuriant tail and shaggy fore-hump and the flap of skin, apparently a penile sheath, an individual feature very
rarely depicted or photographed and puzzling even to the specialists at London Zoo 9 . This feature does also
appear in Pinturicchio’s fresco though it may have been understood to be a mammary gland.
As fine drawings and remarkable records of an early encounter by a Western artist with an animal from
the east, these three sheets are of significant interest. It remains a matter of speculation however as to their
source. Jonathan Raby has attributed the Windsor sheet to Costanzo de Moysis, also known as Costanzo de
Ferrara, an artist said to have spent years in Constantinople but by whom the only surviving works seem to
be two medals. The suggestion supports, however, the notion of the source being a work by a North Italian
artist studying imports from the East, whether actual or merely recorded; indeed Durer’s famous rhinoceros
was based upon a description in a letter which also enclosed an anonymous drawing of the beast imported
into Lisbon in 1515.
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103

Aurelio Luini
Luino 1530-1593 Milan
31
A Standing Male Figure, perhaps an Apostle or Prophet.
Pen and brown ink, over black chalk.
407 x 209 mm. (16 x 8 ½ in.)
Provenance: With Amando Neerman, London, Old Master Drawings, 1973 (?), no.14; with Yvonne
Ffrench, London; purchased 1975 by Ralph Holland.
Exhibitied: London, Courtauld Institute Galleries, Italian and other drawings, 1500-1800, 1975, cat.13;
Newcastle upon Tyne, Hatton Gallery, Italian Drawings 1525-1750, 1982, cat. 10.
Luini belonged to a well-established family of Milanese painters; his father was Bernardino Luini and
Aurelio began his career with his brother, Giovan Pietro, collaborating on a series of frescoes in the
church of San Maurizio al Monastero Maggiore. Possibly because his major works are in fresco, Luini
is now more well known as a draughtsman than as a painter. Though his drawings are relatively rare,
his style is distinctive, using scratchy, vigorous penwork to create angular and elongated figures on an
unusually large scale. His sheets of head studies are also impressive.
It has not been possibly to connect the present work to a painting but two very similar drawings may be
compared, one sold at auction in 2008 and the other, a signed sheet, in the Ambrosiana library, Milan 1 ;
these three works are close enough in character and scale to suggest that they may have been intended for
figures which formed part of a series. Other works by the artist are in the Munich Graphische Sammlung
(inv.2680 L), the Uffizi (inv. 1502F), Dresden and the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh.
For nearly forty years this drawing was in the collection of the eminent scholar collector Ralph Holland
who retired to London after a career teaching Art History at Newcastle. He began to collect drawings in
the late 1940s, buying chiefly Italian drawings, often unattributed, which he would then research with
tireless enthusiasm and frequent success. He corresponded with museum curators and other collectors,
travelled widely in Italy, scouring churches for unpublished altarpieces and made copious and detailed
notes of his discoveries. This dynamic figure study is highly representative of his interest in striking and
characteristic works by the lesser-known masters of the 16 th and 17 th centuries.
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105

Alessandro Allori, called Il Bronzino
Florence 1535-1607
32
Study of the Head of a Woman looking upwards; preparatory for the “Noli me Tangere”
Black chalk.
219 x 154 mm. (8 ½ x 6 ¼ in.)
This extremely sensitive head study is preparatory for Allori’s painting of the Noli me Tangere (fig.1), a
large oil on canvas in the church of the Santissima Trinità in Arezzo 1 , believed to date from 1584. A much
reduced version of the scene, an oil on copper, with various changes, particularly in the background, was
recorded by Venturi as being in the collection of the Conte Volpi di Misurata, Rome 2 , and a drawing of that
whole composition, within an elaborate decorative frame, preparatory for a tapestry of the subject is in the
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut 3 . The subject would appear to have been an important
one to Allori, who was possibly initially inspired by Bronzino’s depiction of 1561, a painting now in the
Louvre. Allori’s compositions are, however, much calmer, more contemplative and, with the later version
on copper, more pastoral, the landscape background becoming a significant part of the design.
That the present drawing was made by the artist specifically for the earlier painting is suggested by the
particularly close correspondence in the inclination of the two heads, and the details of the Magdalen’s
costume and hair, a flowing lock of which is pressed up against her sleeve as she raises her hands. In the
painting on copper, there is a slight difference in the tilt of Mary Magdalen’s head, and a subtle change in
her expression while Christ’s head is more upright than in the larger painting and in the related fragment
of a head study at the top of this sheet.
It is remarkable how many times Allori used this particular female model for his drawings and paintings, to
the extent that she appears as his muse or female ideal especially as his art becomes more naturalistic after
the early, Bronzino dominated years. A well-known
study in the British Museum, London shows her
kneeling, holding a book in her lap, her hair also
long and flowing freely but differently dressed 4 . The
figure was used for that of Mary in the altarpiece
of Christ in the House of Martha and Mary in the
chapel of the Palazzo Portinari-Salviati in Florence,
painted in 1580. She appears again kneeling before
Christ in the Christ in Limbo of the Capella Salviati,
in San Marco, Florence, painted prior to 1588. She
also appears in the painting of the Resurrection
of Lazarus, in the church of Sant’Agostino,
Montepulciano, again kneeling with a book in her
lap, for which figure Allori made sketches on a
sheet now in the Uffizi (inv.10204), her hair put up,
as she also appeared in a study, again in the Uffizi
(inv.10299) for the Christ and the Woman of Canea
in the church of San Giovannino degli Scolopi. She
is again surely the model for the numerous versions
of one of Allori’s most successful compositions, The
Madonna crowned by the Christ Child with a garland
of flowers as well as for the Penitent Mary Magdalen
in the Museo Stibbert, Florence. 5 The latest painting
in which she appears is the Christ in the House
1. Alessandro Allori, Noli me tangere, Santissima Trinità,
Arezzo.
of Martha and Mary, now in the Kunsthistorisches
Vienna, which is signed and dated 1605. 6
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actual size
107

Jacob Matham
Haarlem 1571-1631
33
The Martyrdom of a Saint
Black and red chalk, with touches of white heightening.
327 x 276 mm. (12 7 /8 x 10 7 /8 in.)
Provenance: Ferruccio Asta, Venice (Lugt 116a); Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby’s, 4 July 1994, lot
33 (as Attributed to Joseph Heinz).
Literature: Herwarth Röttgen, ‘“Li giovani cercavano di imitare la bella maniera di lui”: Spranger, Raffaellino
and the “giovani”, in Sabine Eiche, Gert Jan van der Sman and Jeanne van Waadenoijen, eds.,
Fiamminghi a Roma 1508-1608: Proceedings of the symposium held at Museum Catharijneconvent,
Utrecht, 13 March 1995, Florence, 1999, pp.41-43, fig.8 (as Joseph Heintz).
Jacob Matham was the stepson and favourite pupil of Hendrick Goltzius, with whom he worked closely,
engraving many of the latter’s drawings and paintings. This was a practice he continued throughout his
career; indeed, of the more than four hundred engravings by Matham that are known, over a quarter were
executed after designs by Goltzius. Matham’s earliest engravings date from the late 1580’s, and show the
influence of the Haarlem Mannerist tradition, notably the drawings of both Bartholomeus Spranger and
Hans Speckaert. In the spring of 1593, at the age of twenty-two and perhaps inspired by his stepfather’s
recent visit, Matham travelled to Italy in the company of his fellow artist Frans Badens. He was to spend
four years in Italy, between 1593 and 1597, working first in Venice and later in Rome. While in Italy,
Matham made drawn copies after the frescoes and paintings of the earlier generation of Italian artists,
such as Palma Giovane, Tintoretto, Taddeo Zuccaro and others. Returning to Haarlem, he joined the local
Guild of Saint Luke in 1600, becoming its president in 1605. It was also around this time that Goltzius
began to move away from printmaking to concentrate on painting, and Matham seems to have taken over
the family’s print publishing business.
Matham’s drawings have been relatively little studied. He seems to have worked in a variety of styles,
drawing mainly in pen and ink but also, on occasion, making use of a combination of black and red chalks.
While this was a common technique in Italy, it was rare in German and Netherlandish draughtsmanship
at the time, and Matham was one of the few artists to take up the practice, as was Goltzius. The present
sheet is stylistically very similar
to Matham’s earliest known drawing,
a study in red and black chalk of A
Sculptor in His Workshop (also known
as Pygmalion and the Statue of Galatea),
signed and dated 1595, formerly
in the Ploos van Amstel and De Grez
collections and is now in the Musées
Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique
in Brussels 1 . Another stylistically related
drawing in a private collection,
depicting Danae and also in red and
black chalk (fig.1), was published by
Dr Léna Widerkehr in 1991 2 . A further
drawing of Diana in the Rijksmuseum
1. Jacob Matham, Danae, Private Collection.
in Amsterdam 3 , also in red and black
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109

2. Jacob Matham, Diana, The Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.
chalk and dated 1602 (fig.2), is probably later, as the handling
of the chalk is softer and more refined, and does not show the
Italian influence clearly discernible in the present sheet.
Matham was inspired by, and made frequent copies of, the work
of Italian artists of the earlier 16th century, and he seems to have
been drawn in particular to the work of the Mannerist painters.
While in Rome, he produced a number of reproductive engravings
after the work of Mannerist artists active in the city - notably
Francesco Salviati, Cavaliere d’Arpino, and Taddeo and
Federico Zuccaro - although these were for the most part published
after his return to Antwerp 4 . While the present sheet is
too free to be a copy of an earlier work, the distinct influence of
such Roman painters is clearly evident.
Dr. Léna Widerkehr has confirmed the attribution of this drawing
to Jacob Matham, and further notes that it is among the earliest
known drawings by the artist, probably executed while he was
in Italy between 1593 and 1597.
In an article of 1999, Herwarth Röttgen published the present
drawings and noted that it showed the particular influence of
the draughtsmanship of Cavaliere d’Arpino 5 , an artist who was
also in Rome when Matham visited the city. This would seem
to confirm Dr Widerkehr’s dating of this drawing and actually
provide an even more precise dating of the drawing to the artist
stay in the Eternal City, before returning to his native city.
110
actual size detail

actual size detail
111

Roelandt Savery
Kortrijk 1576-1639 Utrecht
34
A Landscape with a Shepherd Resting by a Gnarled Tree, and Goats Grazing
Black chalk, heightened with touches of red, grey and blue wash and white heightening. Indented for
transfer. Signed at lower left with monogram “RS”.
220 x 278 mm. (8 5 /8 x 11 in.)
Provenance: Charles Rogers (1711-1784), his stamp at the lower left (Lugt 624); Sir John Charles Robinson
(1824-1913), his monogram in gold at the lower left (Lugt 1433); Paul Frantz Marcou (1860-1932) (Lugt 1911b).
Roeland Savery began his artistic career in Amsterdam under the tuition of his brother Jacob (1565-1603)
before travelling to Prague in 1604 where he became court painter to the Emperors Rudolph II and Matthias.
Both Emperors had made their court a centre of Mannerist art; Rudolph’s galleries were the most impressive
in Europe at the time, and he employed some of the best contemporary artists, including Bartholomaus
Spranger, Hans von Aachen and Adrien de Vries. The Emperor also possessed a strong interest in botany,
landscape, science and philosophy. In 1606, he commissioned Savery to travel to Tyrol “to draw wonders”
which would reflect the beauty and particularity of the Tyrolean countryside; these were then to adorn the
Emperor’s palace. During this period, Savery executed large landscapes embellished with meticulously
rendered animals and plants. He also made numerous preparatory sketches of trees, waterfalls, mountains,
and birds, which provided reference material for later paintings, for example, the Cascade of 1608. Savery
returned to court in 1608, and began compiling an extensive repertory of figure studies. Drawn directly
from life observed in the busy markets of Prague, these are inspired by Pieter Breughel I, whose work the
Emperor had spared no expense in acquiring for his collection. In fact, until 1970, these drawings were
attributed to Breughel 1 . Savery often inscribed these studies with the words “naer het leven” (drawn from
life); he would then return to the studio to further enhance them, before inserting them into paintings
such as the Peasants Carousing of 1608. In 1618, Savery settled in Utrecht, where he befriended the still
life painters Balthasar van der Ast and Ambrosius Bosschaert. During the 1620s he was one of the most
successful painters in Utrecht, where he remained until the end of his life in 1639.
The present sheet is a superb and rare example of an intricately rendered, highly finished chalk drawing by
Savery. Possibly sketched directly from nature, Savery has worked up the view into a pictorial composition,
with a powerfully drawn foreground becoming gradually lighter and more delicate as the scene recedes.
The depiction of the gnarled tree trunk in thick, heavy black chalk serves to heighten the dramatic intensity
of the scene. The tree is set close against the picture plane and this, combined with the deep shadows
and contorted tree roots evokes an eerie sense of mystery to an otherwise naturalistic scene. Masterfully in
its draughtsmanship, particular attention is given to the minutely detailed bark of the tree trunk, executed
with lively and expressive coloured chalk contours.
The drawing, which is indented throughout, was
engraved in reverse by Aegidius Sadeler (fig.1) 2
and can be compared with another sketch by
Savery of Giant Trees, 3 also engraved in reverse by
Sadeler, which shows similarities in the rendering
of the contorted tree-trunk, in the leaves and in the
surrounding landscape. Another detailed study
of the entwined roots of a tree, but without the
pictorial setting seen here, drawn with chalk and
pen and ink, is in the Metropolitan Museum, New
York. The latter is described as being partly drawn in
chalk dipped in oil which is perhaps the technique
used in the present work as well, given the rich,
1. Aegidius Sadeler, after Roeland Savery, engraving dense and varied texture of the medium.
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113

Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, called Il Guercino
Cento 1591-1666 Bologna
35
Study of a Dragon Pierced by a Lance; preparatory for “St. George and the Dragon”
Pen and brown ink. Laid down. Inscribed: Salvator in brown ink at lower right. Further inscribed (by
Uvedale Price) Salvator Rosa. I.U. Price bought at Rome of G. Hamilton 1767, in brown ink on the
verso.
194 x 186 mm. (7 ½ x 7 ¼ in.)
Provenance: Gavin Hamilton, Rome; acquired in Rome in 1767 by Uvedale Price (L.2048), his
posthumous sale, London, Sotheby and Wilkinson, 3 rd -4 th May 1854, lot 206 (as Salvator Rosa, Study
for a Dragon, free pen); Walpole collection (according
to a pencil inscription on the old mount); The Société
Frits Lugt pour l’Étude des Marques de Collections, Paris
(their stamp SFL, L.3031 (see online database); sale, Paris,
Piasa, 31 st March 2003, lot 28); Jean-Luc Baroni, Ltd.;
Private Collection, Paris.
1. After Guercino, Pinacoteca Nazionale
Bologna
This expressive pen and ink drawing is a preparatory
study for a lost painting by Guercino of St George and
the Dragon, the composition of which is known through
a copy in the Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna (fig.1) 1 . The
painting is mentioned by Malvasia as having been painted
in 1639 for a Padre Angelo Torre of Ferrara (Un s.Giorgio
grande al naturale per il P.D. Angelo Torre Abbate
Ferrarese) although according to Guercino’s account
book, the libro dei conti, it was actually commissioned
two years earlier. This records that an initial payment of
25 ducatoni was paid by Torre on the 5 th February 1637,
while a second and final payment of 100 scudi was
received on the 14 th October 1639.
Apart from this drawing, a small number of other
studies have been associated with the composition: a
study belonging to the collection of Sir Denis Mahon
(fig.2), another similar one in the Uffizi, Florence and a
retouched tracing. 2
2. Guercino, Sir Denis Mahon Collection.
The present sheet once belonged to the English amateur
and collector, Uvedale Price (1747-1829). Price’s
collection of drawings was notable for fine examples by
Claude and Salvator Rosa, to whom the present sheet
was long attributed. His collection was formed, as the
1854 catalogue of the sale of his estate noted, ”with the
greatest Taste and Care, in a continental tour undertaken
during the years 1767-68”. This is confirmed by the
collector’s inscription on the reverse of the mount of this
drawing, which notes that it was acquired by Price from
Gavin Hamilton (1723-1798), a Scottish neoclassical
painter who had lived in Rome since 1748 and had there
established a secondary career as an art dealer.
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115

Pietro Berrettini, called Da Cortona
Cortona 1596-1667 Rome
36
Study of a Reclining Male Figure; preparatory for the figure of “Rage”
Black chalk heightened with white chalk.
239 x 369 mm. (9 1 /3 x 14 1 /2 in.)
Provenance: Private Collection, Switzerland, since the 1930s.
Born in Tuscany, Pietro da Cortona began his career in Florence, apprenticed to Andrea Commodi
but quickly left for Rome probably at the age of only 16. In Rome, he stayed amongst the circle of
Tuscan artists and quickly came to the attention of the powerful Sacchetti brothers, originally Florentine
themselves. Cortona’s first significant commission in Rome was the fresco decorations for the church of
St. Bibiena, newly designed by Bernini, painted over two years from 1624 to 1626. The Sacchetti family
subsequently employed Cortona to design and decorate two family villas, in Ostia and in Rome itself,
behind St. Peter’s. It was through his work for the Sacchetti that Cortona met Maffeo Barberini, later
Pope Urban VIII and with his patronage, Cortona became second only to Bernini in his importance in
the Roman art world 1 . Apart from an interlude of six years spent chiefly in Florence between 1641 and
1647, where he executed successful fresco schemes in Palazzo Pitti but was mainly obstructed in his
architectural ambitions, Cortona lived out his career in Rome. Rivalry between himself and the highly
political Bernini was intense but Cortona was able to keep ahead through his preeminence as a painter.
Jörg Martin Merz, in his study of Cortona as an architect, describes his career as being an ”extraordinary
mixture of success and frustration”; unassailable success as a painter but considerably mixed fortunes as
an architect famed for the extravagance and expense of his projects. The son of a stonemason, Pietro da
Cortona was in fact a man of greater learning than many of his contemporary painters and he repeatedly
told his pupils that without knowledge of ancient and modern history, both sacred and profane, it would
be impossible to become a successful artist. Romanelli, Cortese, Ferri and Baldi are some of the many
followers who carried on his style into the early years of the 18 th century.
Vigorous and powerful, this black chalk drawing is a fine example of Cortona’s magnificent figure studies
which characteristically depict complicated poses and viewpoints. Here the reclining man lifts himself
with arms bent and one leg raised, his weight resting on the left hand side of his body, his fists clenched,
the muscles of his back and stomach straining with the effort. The drawing is preparatory for the figure of
Rage in Cortona’s vast fresco The Triumph of Divine Providence and the Fulfilment of her Ends under the
Papacy of Urban VIII which covers the colossal ceiling of the Gran Salone on the piano nobile of Palazzo
Barberini (figs.1-2). A considerable part of the Barberini archive is conserved in the Vatican Apostolic Library,
making it possible to retrace the progress
of the fresco’s conception and design.
Cortona began work in November
1632 and completed the project seven
years later. Giuseppe Passeri recorded
the circumstances of the commission
which had at first been given to Andrea
Camassei: A change in opinions and
fortunes caused this vault to be assigned
by the Pope himself to Signor Pietro da
Cortona: and in the space of fourteen
years he transformed it into this work of
beauty that can be seen today … 2
1. Pietro da Cortona, The Triumph of Divine Providence and the
Fulfillment of her Ends under the Papacy of Urban VII, Fresco
(detail), Palazzo Barberini, Rome.
Pope Urban VIII was an intellectual and
a foremost patron of the arts. He kept
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118

a lively circle of poets, scholars and artists with whom he appears to have devised the complicated
iconographic and allegoric programme for the ceiling, intended to celebrate the triumph of the Barberini
family and specifically Maffeo Barberini’s own ascent to the papal throne in 1623. Cortona’s scheme
divided the ceiling into compartments which, while they create order and architectural definition,
overflow with movement and trompe l’oeil effect. Figures drift out of their compartments raised on
clouds, blown by heavenly breezes, giants burst forth, tumbling outwards and downwards to escape the
arrows of the Archangel Michael. The completion of the scheme confirmed Cortona’s position as the preeminent
painter working in Rome. He was paid most generously by the Barberini and had already been
nominated “Principe” of the Accademia di San Luca in 1633.
Two other drawings preparatory for the Barberini ceiling were shown in the recent exhibition at the
Louvre Pietro da Cortona et Ciro Ferri; studies for the figures of Divine Providence and Abundance 3 ;
other examples for the scheme are the drawing for a Wind God in the Metropolitan Museum, New York 4 ,
a study for the Female Figure holding the Papal Tiara in the Pierpont Morgan Library 5 and a study for
the figure of Justice from the collection of Niccolo Gabburi in the British Museum 6 . Overall, however,
a surprisingly small number of Cortona’s drawings related to this vast project seem to have survived; at
the time of a 1967 exhibition of Baroque drawings from New York collections, only about a dozen were
said to have been recorded in the literature. The present work, a particularly imposing example, is one of
only very few to have emerged since that summary and it ranks with the drawing in the Morgan Library
which was described in the following terms: “of these preparatory drawings, none is more beautiful than
this …”.
2. Pietro da Cortona, The Triumph of Divine Providence and the Fulfillment of her Ends
under the Papacy of Urban VII, Fresco, Palazzo Barberini, Rome.
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37
Carlo Maratta
Camerano 1625-1713 Rome
Study of a Standing Male Nude pulling on a Rope, with separate studies for his Arms and Legs;
preparatory for the Altarpiece of The Martyrdom of St Blaise of Sebaste.
Red chalk heightened with white chalk on buff paper.
419 x 273 mm. (16 ½ x 10 ¾ in.)
Considerable numbers of Maratta’s extremely fine drawings survive but by far the majority have been kept
in groups and are now in public collections; the important holdings of his work in the Royal Collection,
Windsor (bought in Rome on behalf of George III from the heir of Pope Clement XI, who himself purchased
the drawings directly from Maratta), the similarly significant group in the Louvre owned previously by
Mariette, and a fascinating section of the Roman Baroque drawings collection in the Dusseldörf print
room, formed by the early 18 th century painter, Lambert Krahe, who lived for two decades in Rome. There
are also slightly smaller groups in Berlin and Madrid.
This powerful, archetypal red chalk study of a male nude with accompanying details was made by the
artist at the height of his career, in preparation for the figure of a Roman soldier. The sheet is grand in scale
and both the red chalk and the white heightening are exceptionally well preserved. The figure appears in
Maratta’s altarpiece of The Martyrdom of St Blaise (S. Biagio di Sebaste) with St. Sebastian, completed shortly
after 1680 for the church of S. Carlo ai Catinari in Rome, also known as the Chiesa de SS. Biagio e Carlo ai
Catinari 1 . The altarpiece is now in the Basilica of Santa Maria dell’Assunta in Genoa, where it already hung
in 1740 2 . Another slightly smaller study for the same figure, also in red chalk with touches of white, (391 x
235 mm) is at Windsor 3 . The present drawing is the closest of the two to the figure in the painting with the
angle of the rope and the tilt of the body being the same. The characterisation of the head is also finer and
more similar to the final work and the angle of the neck more accurate. A third drawing for the composition,
a black chalk study for the figure of St. Sebastian, is also at Windsor, while a study for the head of the child
sheltering behind his mother from the terrible sight is in the Dusseldorf print room. It may be presumed that
other studies are now lost as, judging from surviving studies for other major altarpieces, Maratta would have
worked intensively in preparing this important picture.
1. Carlo Maratta, The Martyrdom of St.
Blaise with St. Sebastian, Basilica of
Santa Maria dell’Assunta, Genoa.
As recorded by his biographer, Giovan Pietro Bellori 4 , whilst Maratta
had been busy working on a commission for mythological canvases
for the King of Spain 5 , he did not neglect to undertake commissions
for the churches of Rome and no sooner had he completed the
altarpiece of Saint Francis Xavier in the Gesù (1679) than he began
another of Saint Blaise and Saint Sebastian in the church of San Carlo
ai Catinari. Bellori describes the dreadful martyrdom of Saint Blaise,
suspended on a rope by his arms and assailed by a torturer armed with
a wool carder for flaying the flesh. The commission specified that St.
Blaise should be shown with his fellow martyr saint, Sebastian and
Bellori remarks upon Maratta’s ingenuity in using the upper part of
the canvas to represent the latter saint in glory, uplifted and brightly
lit: in this manner Carlo completed and accommodated these two
subjects in a single picture, in which the most beautiful operations
of nude figures are displayed in various views, and which is so well
executed that not only does it convey the merit of this master but it
may be counted among the most highly praised works of our age.
Bellori also notes that thus far, it is hidden from the public and has
not been put back in the place for which it was originally intended.
Indeed, the painting may never have been installed in Rome, as the
depiction in S. Carlo ai Catinari of The Martyrdom of St. Blaise is by
Giacinto Brandi.
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Benedetto Luti
Florence 1666-1724 Rome
38
A Young Boy in Profile
Pastel on card. Signed and dated in pen and brown ink on the verso: Benedetto Luti fece 1719.
270 x 322 mm. (10 ¾ x 12 ¼ in.)
Provenance: From a Florentine Noble Family
In its original frame and backing panel inscribed again in pen and brown ink: Roma 1719 / Il Cavalier
Benedetto Luti fece.
Upon his return to Florence following a four year stay in Venice, in around 1683-1684 Luti enrolled in the
studio of Anton Domenico Gabbiani. In April 1691, he moved to Rome where he was to remain for the rest
of his life. There, his capacity to adapt his Late Baroque Florentine style to the more classical Roman taste
helped him to experience an early success, winning numerous commissions from members of important
families such as the Barberini, Pallavicini, Colonna, Ottoboni and Odescalchi. He was also involved in the
most important papal commissions, such as the series of the Old Testament Prophets commissioned by
Pope Clement XI for the central nave of San Giovanni in Laterano between 1716 and 1718. Through his
connection with the Tuscan court, Luti’s reputation spread over other European countries, and he received
commissions from a number of the most important collectors of the time, such as Thomas Coke, 1 st Earl of
Leicester, Sir Robert Walpole, Augustus III, King of Poland, and Empress Catherine II. Luti was equally, if
not more, famous as a drawings collector and, Jonathan Richardson, who considered him to be the Best
Connoisseur in Rome, remarked: “This Collection is very Numerous. I believe he may have near 3000 of
almost All the Masters, except the Old ones, Those anterior to the Raffaele-age; of these I don’t remember
that he has Any, except for Lionardo da Vinci” 1 . Luti received the visits of other foreigns connoisseurs and
amateurs as well, among whom were Antoine Joseph-Dezallier d’Argenville, Pierre Crozat and Pierre-Jean
Mariette. The latter, whom Luti met in 1719, admired his “très belle collection d’estampes et de dessins des
grands maîtres qu’il se faisoit un plaisir de faire voir aux connoisseurs” 2 . In 1694, Luti became a member of
the Accademia di San Luca, and in 1720, he was elected as its principal. He also ran a popular school of
drawing, counting amongst his pupils Jean-Baptiste and Carle Van Loo as well as numerous Italian artists.
As Edgar Peters Bowron - author of the first substantial monographic work on the artist back in 1979 3 -
points out in his preface to Rodolfo Maffeis’ newly published monograph on the artist, Luti’s predilection
for colour found expression in his remarkably fresh and brilliant studies of heads and busts of apostles,
saints, angels and children in the technique of trois crayons and pastel. 4 Luti appears to have begun
working in pastel in around 1703, producing a series of heads of apostles as studies for large religious
paintings. Unusually for works in pastel, particularly as used in France, Luti often used the colours red,
yellow and orange as well as working in black chalk on the hair and clothing. He became prolific and
highly sought after in this medium. His pendant boys and girls, executed in an exquisite and luminous
technique, became extremely popular and were much imitated. According to Neil Jeffares, his pastel
technique was just as influential as that of his Venetian contemporary Rosalba Carriera 5 , to whom many
pastels by Luti have been erroneously attributed to in the past.
The present pair, companion studies of a young boy and slightly older girl, are a most excellent example
of Luti’s famous pastel heads. In their original frames and backing boards and twice signed, their fine
quality and untouched state make them exceptional. A painted version of the young boy, with differences,
is in the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen in Munich 6 , and a pastel, almost identical to the
painted version, but in reverse, is in the Metropolitan Museum, New York 7 . A further oil of the same boy,
though holding as flute, is in the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg 8 . Two copies are also known: one
oil on canvas after the Munich painting 9 , the other a pastel in the Uffizi 10 after the Metropolitan Museum
reversed version. No other version of the present pastel of the young girl are known.
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123

Benedetto Luti
Florence 1666-1724 Rome
39
A Girl with her Hair Tied back and a Gold Earring.
Pastel on card. Inscribed in pen and brown ink on the verso: Benedetto Luti fece 1719.
270 x 322 mm. (10 ¾ x 12 ¼ in.)
Provenance: From a Florentine Noble Family
In its original frame and backing panel inscribed again in pen and brown ink: Roma 1719 / Il Cavalier
Benedetto Luti fece (fig.1).
See entry no.38 on previous page.
1. Verso of the backing panel bearing the inscripotion with
the name of the artist and date of the pastel.
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125

Giovanni Paolo Panini
Piacenza 1691-1765 Rome
40
An Architectural Capriccio with Figures among Classical ruins, broken Columns and Pediments
Pen and black ink and watercolour over traces of black chalk. Signed with initials G.P.P.
336 x 237 mm. (13 1 /4 x 9 3 /8 in.)
Provenance: The Hon. Irwin Laughlin; Anonymous sale, Christie’s, London, 1 st December 1970, lot
144 (£1,300 to Slatkin); with Charles E. Slatkin Galleries, New York.
Literature: J.S. Herbert, ed., Christie’s Reviews of the Year, 1970/1971, illustrated p. 91.
Born in Piacenza, Panini trained under Ferdinando Galli Bibiena, the renowned stage designer and painter
of false perspective. He was also associated with Giuseppe Natali and Andrea Galluzzi, lesser talents
of the same genre. In 1711, the young Panini went to Rome where he entered Bededetto Luti’s studio.
It is likely that he came into contact at this time with paintings by Ghisolfi and Salvator Rosa, which
were to have considerable influence on the development of his art. By the 1720s, Panini was working
for aristocratic Roman families and powerful cardinals, such as Giulio Alberoni, his compatriot, whose
palace he decorated between 1725 and 1726 and he remained in Rome for the rest of his increasingly
successful career. Thanks to Alberoni, Panini received important commissions from Cardinal Melchior
de Polignac, the French Ambassador in Rome, which did much to establish his European reputation. His
contacts with France were strengthened by his friendship with Nicholas Vleughels, director of the French
Academy in Rome, whose brother-in-law he was to become. In 1732, Panini was elected member of the
Royal Academy in Paris, an honour rarely given to Italian artists. When Vleughels died in 1737, Panini
was even considered as his successor, although the position was finally given to Jean-François de Troy.
Hubert Robert was among Panini’s pupils at the French Academy and artists as important as Fragonard
and Canaletto were influenced by his work. In 1719 he had been elected to the Accademia di San Luca
where he taught perspective for decades, becoming director in 1754. Panini is generally considered to
have soared above the throng of competent but uninspired artists who painted figures upon ruins and he
had many imitators. Within this chosen genre his work is extremely varied, ranging from depictions of
the religious, diplomatic and popular festivities which animated Roman life to topographical renderings
of Rome’s squares and churches but capricci were an important element of his work and appealed
particularly to Grand Tour travellers.
The composition of this elegant watercolour has at its centre figures amongst three standing columns
with a pediment and one broken column and various fragments, features which also appear in a painting
recently on the Roman Art market, although against a different background. 1 The columns with the
particularly deep overhang of the cornice are seen again in a bozzetto signed: I.P.P, Ro... 2 and seem to
be an invention of Panini’s based on such ruins as the Temple of Castor and Pollux in the Forum in Rome.
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127

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo
Venice 1696-1770 Madrid
41
Head of a Bearded Oriental; the verso with Figure Studies.
Pen and brown ink and wash, with traces of red chalk (recto); pen and brown ink (verso).
307 x 233 mm. (12 x 9 1 /8 in.)
Provenance: Paul Delaroff, St. Petersburg (his mark twice on the verso);
with Galerie Cailleux, Paris, from whom purchased in 1966 and then by descent.
Giambattista was highly successful in his lifetime; he was apprenticed to Gregorio Lazzarini, a highly
competent and knowledgeable master, and while his earliest work was greatly influenced by Giambattista
Piazzetta, Tintoretto and Veronese are considered to be at the basis of his style. In this sense Tiepolo is a
truly Venetian artist having light, colour, dramatic fertility and brilliance of design at the heart of his highly
productive manner. By the mid-1720s, success in Venice brought important commissions from further afield;
a series of frescoes in Udine, followed by mythological decorations for Palazzo Archinto and Palazzo Casati in
Milan. In the 1730s, Tiepolo was able to mould his style to suit such contrasting patrons as the Franciscan Poor
Clare order with an Immaculate Conception, and the sophisticated Count Carl Gustav Tessin with a Jupiter
and Danae. By 1739 he had made his first great eccelesiastical fresco cycle in S Maria del Rosario, the church
of the Gesuati in Venice and in the early 1740s he worked on three secular projects, the frescoes for Palazzo
Clerici in Milan, Villa Cordellina in Montecchio Maggiore and the magnificent Antony and Cleopatra in the
Palazzo Labia, Venice. The early 1750s were occupied with the huge, three-year project to decorate, using
a programme of allegorical glorification, the Kaisersaal and Staircase of the Residenz at Wurzburg for the
Prince Bishop Karl Philipp von Greiffenklau. Having returned to Venice, in 1756, Tiepolo was made President
of the recently founded Venetian Academy whilst continuing to work through a ceaseless progression of
commissions for patrons as diverse as Augustus III of Saxony and Poland and the Oratory of the Purità in
Udine. A series of delicate and moving frescoes were painted in four small rooms in the Villa Valmarana
near Vicenza and in 1760 he accepted the proposal from the Pisani family to decorate the vast ceiling of the
central hall in their villa in Brenta. Combining, as at Wurzburg, portraiture with allegory, this was Tiepolo’s
largest fresco project in a private dwelling and the last work he undertook in his native country. In 1762,
summoned to Madrid by Charles III of Spain, Giambattista left Italy with his two painter sons and began
work in the Palacio Real on a detailed decorative programme intended to glorify Spanish power. Ambitious
for further success in Spain, he made modelli for a series of huge altarpieces for the Franciscan church of San
Pascual in Aranjuez. The finished works were installed in May 1790, shortly after the artist’s sudden death two
months earlier. Only a number of delicate, devotional paintings illustrating the Rest on the Flight into Egypt
and Christ’s Passion hint at the nostalgia and strain Giambattista must have felt during the long, demanding
and final chapter of his extraordinary career 1 .
This handsome study of the head of an oriental is similar to another by Giambattista, in red chalk and red
wash, in the Fogg Art Museum. 1 George Knox dates the Fogg drawing circa 1760, shortly before Tiepolo left
for Spain and both that and the present work must relate to the series of painted heads of Orientals which
he believes to have been made at the same time. Bernard Aikema, in turn, suggests a slightly earlier dating
noting that the paintings’ “brilliant, light brushwork” 2 argues for a date in the Venetian period between the
family’s return from Wurzburg in 1753 and their departure for Madrid in 1762. Knox suggests that the Fogg
drawing was etched by Giandomenico as part of the series Raccolta di Teste, which consists of two groups
of thirty etchings each, published after Giambattista’s death.
Stylistically a dating of circa 1760 could also be applied to this very quick and skilful pen and wash drawing.
Knox has proposed the same dating for similar pen and wash heads and for the series of variations on the
theme of The Holy Family. 3 On the verso are a number of quick sketches vigorously drawn in pen and brown
ink, possibly studies for the body of the dead Christ in a Lamentation or Deposition. Giambattista seems
to have treated this subject a few times in his career, also around 1760, see for example The Deposition in
the National Gallery, London (circa 1750-60), a work that Morassi described as influenced by Rembrandt’s
Deposition, and which was in Consul Smith’s Collection in Venice until 1762. 4
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129

Jan Van Huysum
Amsterdam 1682-1749
42
A Magnificent Arrangement of Flowers in an Urn, resting on a Ledge.
Black chalk and brown wash and watercolour. Signed and dated: Jan V Huysum fecit 1726 (lower right)
390 x 330 mm. (15 3 /8 x 13 in.)
Provenance: sale, Frankfurt, Prestel, Goldschmidt collection, 4-5 October 1917, lot 287. Private
Collection, Great Britain.
Jan van Huysum belonged to a family of painters and spent all his career in Amsterdam. He liked to think
of himself as a landscape painter but his most appreciated works by far were and are his elaborate and
exuberant flower paintings of which there are examples in all the great museum collections. Connoisseurs
and collectors were forced to wait for his works; one, actually, on impatiently asking for progress, was
told it would be at least a year until the next season’s particular yellow rose appeared for Van Huysum
to paint from!
Flower drawings by Jan van Huysum, called the Prince of flower-painters 1 , are very rare, and these extant
drawings vary considerably in their level of finish. Some, usually in monochrome, are loosely handled
and very sketchy. Others are more elaborately finished in colour and with great detail. It has been
suggested that fully worked up drawings of this type might have been made by the artist to demonstrate
to a prospective patron the various compositional possibilities but the exact role played by drawings in
Van Huysum’s creative process remains somewhat ambiguous. In certain cases, the artist seems to have
made true preparatory sketches, and these relate closely to known pictures. However, the artist also
made drawings intended to stand as finished works in their own right, as well as ricordi of his painted
compositions. The present drawing is surely too spontaneous and freely handled to be a ricordo, and
may perhaps be a presentation sketch for a potential client. The significant blooms can be identified and
include several of the artist’s favourites: the blue poppy anemone (anemone coronaria plena coerulea);
the tulips (tulipa hybrids) in the upper right; and the large pale-pink cabbage roses (rosa x centifolia)
at the centre of the bouquet and on the table. A painting in the National Gallery in London shows a
very similar urn, in terracotta and with a frieze of dancing putti, but this coloured drawing seems to be
closest of all to a splendid painting of 1722 now in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, which has a similarly
vertiginous arrangement of magnificent blooms with a fulsome pink rose spilling out on to the ledge. It
is precisely this naturalistic sense of movement and fecundity which gives Van Huysum’s paintings and
drawings such strength and in drawings, the freedom is particularly pronounced because of the fluency
of his technique.
Van Huysum seems to have been unusual in making fine drawings; it was only the next generation
who took up the baton with such painters as John and Jakob van Os and the various members of the
Spaendonck family making copies after van Huysum and more painstaking works of their own, in
watercolour and gouache.
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43
Pietro Gonzaga
Longarone 1751-1831 St. Petersburg
Design for the Stage Curtain of the Venetian Theatre “La Fenice”: A Circular Temple Entrance
with Sculptures of Philosophers and Mercury bidding Figures to enter.
Watercolour and white heightening over pen and brown ink and grey wash.
640 x 480 mm. (25 ¼ x 18 ¾ in.)
Pietro Gonzaga is considered to be the first theatrical designer to have viewed his sets as works an
art. He trained in Venice during the late 1760s and early 1770s and was deeply influenced there by
Tiepolo and particularly Piranesi. His career properly began in Milan, where he studied with the stage
designers Bernardino Fabrizio and Giovanni Antonio Galliari and made his debut at La Scala in 1779,
working there regularly until 1792. His designs for other theatres in Genoa, Rome and back in Venice
were also extremely successful and his curtain for La Fenice was copied endlessly by fellow designers.
In 1792 he moved to Russia where he went on the recommendation of Prince Nikolay Yusupov, then the
director of music and pageantry at the court of Catherine the Great. He became the principal designer for
Catherine’s theatrical productions at the Hermitage and other palaces and had the Empress’s full support;
during Lent, when entertainments were prohibited, she is said to have called for performances consisting
only of the changing of Gonzaga’s sets and decorations to the accompaniment of music.
This grand work is rare in Gonzaga’s œuvre for its exceptionally high degree of finish and must presumably
have been a presentation study. A smaller drawing of the same vestibule, with loosely sketched figures, in
pen, brown ink and grey wash over traces of black chalk, is in the Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg (fig.1) 1 .
Included in the 1967 Cini Foundation exhibition on Pietro Gonzaga as a stage designer, it was described
as the bozzetto for the stage curtain of the Fenice Theatre prior to the fire of 1836. The motif of a circular
temple surrounded by a gallery reappears in a number of Gonzaga’s designs and is thought to derive from
Piranesi 2 . The Cini catalogue also notes that Gonzaga made a variant of this design for the stage curtain of
the small theatre at Pavlovsk outside St. Petersburg. The curator of architectural drawings at the Hermitage,
Ekaterina Orekhova, has recently proposed, however, that their drawing was intended as a stage curtain for
the Hermitage theatre or for the Yussupov theatre at Archanangelskoe near Moscow which opened in 1818.
The present version of the design has slight differences in the figures and is much more worked up in the
architectural detail such as the marble columns and their elaborate Corinthian capitals, the banding around
the pediment, the individually depicted sculptures of classical philosophers and writers and the intricate
tiling of the tightly curved ceiling.
The Hermitage Print Room has a collection of two hundred drawings attributed to Gonzaga, of which about
one hundred and thirty are indisputably autograph.
In Russia Gonzaga was given the title Head of all
scenography for the Imperial theatres but he also
worked as an architect, for the gallery at Tsarskoe
Selo, and as a decorative painter and landscape
gardener at Pavlovsk for Paul I and his wife, Maria
Feodorovna. Another grand scale design, not quite
as large as this one but also highly finished with
watercolour, is part of the Hermitage group and
depicts a series of grand architectural spaces with a
dome, pilasters, statuary and coffered decoration.
It entered the Imperial collection before 1797 3 .
Two further sheets for the same project as the
present drawing, in pen and brown ink and wash,
are known, one in a private collection in France,
1. Francesco Gonzaga, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg. and the other formerly on the London art market 4 .
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44
Pelagio Palagi
Bologna 1775-1860 Turin
A Meeting of Artists in Classical Dress, Gathered before the Busts of the Renaissance Masters: An
Academy of Drawing in the Palazzo di Venezia, Rome.
Black chalk heightened with white gouache on buff coloured paper, within framing lines. The artist has named
himself and some of the artists depicted along the edges of the tunics and in an album: Palagi/ Giuseppe Guizzardi/
Gius. Cllignon/ Basiletti. Two of the three busts are also inscribed: [RA]FAEL, BUONARROTI.
279 x 452 mm. (11 x 17 ¾ in.)
This impressive drawing is not only one of the best graphic works by Pelagio Pelagi but it documents a magical
moment, which was to have important ramifications for Italian and European art of the 19 th century 1 . In March
1806, having won the painting competition at the Academy in Bologna, Palagi received a grant to live in Rome
for four years. There he met Giuseppe Guizzardi, winner of the prize in 1804 and other prizewinning students
from the Academies of Venice and Milan. The artists met regularly in the Palazzo di Venezia, then Embassy of
the Serenissima, which was established as the Accademia d’Italia in 1812 through the efforts of Antonio Canova.
Palagio, along with Minardi, became the leader of this group of artists, creating a cultural salon which he proudly
called “nostra accademia”. The young students would meet on a daily basis, often dressed all’antica as recorded
in a portrait of Giuseppe Guizzardi painted by Pelagi in 1807 (now in the Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Bologna)
as well as in the diary entries of the members. They drew obsessively from nude models and from classical basreliefs.
This drawing, an important testimony published here for the first time, vividly records an extraordinary
period of apprenticeship; a creative furnace which soon produced a new artistic language for Italy. This new
model of study was quite revolutionary and caused controversy in the Academies from which these artists came.
In a letter dated 4 July 1807, Count Carlo Filippo Aldrovandi, the new president of the Bolognese Academy, wrote
to Palagi in Rome “L’Accademia di Bologna … knows how to evaluate the time wasted in your gigantic Roman
drawings” 2 ; drawings which, now, are amongst the finest examples of European neoclassicism. A terminus post
quem exists for this actual work both in the fact that Basiletti and Guizzardi left Rome in the first months of 1809
and in the information given in a letter by Palagi to his Bolognese friend, the engraver Francesco Rosaspina. This
letter also testifies to the central role Palagi played in these meetings: “It is already more than three weeks that
we have been meeting in my palace and more precisely in my apartment, a brigade of my friends have installed
themselves to draw in the evening from reliefs, and at the end of this month, we will work from a live model.
Guizzardi, who works hard and with whom I make many studies, is one of the members of our academy. As are
Basiletti, Minardi, Comerio, Marchesi, student from Milan, Colignon from Florence and others” 3 . Pelagi therefore
appears to be describing to Rosaspina the very scene which is depicted here and beyond the artists whose
names are given by Pelagi, we must moreover presume that, as the physiognomies are quite distinct and realistic,
the other portraits could also be identified amongst the list of artists given in the letter. Hovering above them
all, represented by the three busts, are the spirits of Raphael and Michelangelo for painting and sculpture and
Socrates, example of virtue and knowledge, for philosophy. Palagi presents the scene in a classical environment,
reminiscent of a Roman “gymnasium”, over which Minerva, protector of the arts and intellectual activity, also
presides, depicted on a relief in the right hand corner.
Destined to have a burgeoning career as a history painter, in those Roman years Palagi was involved in the
most prestigious artistic projects undertaken in Napoleonic Rome 3 . Between 1811 and 1813, a project for the
decorations of the Palazzo Imperiale intended for the use of Napoleon, contributed to the diffusion of a new
figurative language and brought together a large number of Italian and foreign painters and sculptors amongst
which, Ingres, Giani, Camuccini, Pinelli, Conca and Thorvaldsen along with Palagi.
Towards the end of 1815, Palagi moved to Milan where he stayed until 1832. He became a sought after portraitist,
as well as the prime exponent of a romantic style, very different from that of his rival Francesco Hayez, with whom
he became engaged in a battle of masterpieces. This ended only in 1832, when Palagi moved definitively to Turin,
summoned by Carlo Alberto di Savoia. For him, the King created the role of Painter for the Royal Palaces, making
Palagi responsible for all elements of the decorative programme from the pictorial decoration to the furnishings,
fabrics and ornaments for the Royal Palace in Turin and all of the other residences of the Sabauda crown.
Francesco Leone
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135

Giuseppe Bernardino Bison
Palmanova 1762-1844 Milan
45
View of the Colonnade of San Lorenzo in Milan
Gouache on board.
193 x 144 mm. (7 2 /3 x 5 3 /4 in.)
Provenance: From an album originally said to have been assembled by the Duchess Stéphanie de
Beauharnais (1789-1860); thence by descent.
One of the last and certainly the best exponents of the 18th Century tradition of view painting, Giuseppe
Bernardino Bison received his artistic training in the Accademia of Venice, where he studied perspective
through the work of Antonio Visentini and the painting of Staffage in the 18th Century manner. Having
qualified in 1789, Bison embarked on an increasingly hectic career as a decorative painter; he was taken
to Ferrara to collaborate on the decorations of the Palazzo Bottoni, and from there he moved to Treviso
and to Padua, where he worked at the Teatro Nuovo. In around 1800, he returned to Venice - at that
time in Austrian hands - where he worked in the Palazzo Dolfin before settling in Trieste. There, Bison
became extremely successful for his murals but he also worked tirelessly as an easel painter. He received
numerous public and private commissions, the most prestigious being the scenes in tempera from the
Iliad of 1803-04 in the Sala rotonda of the Palazzo Carciotti and the vast ceiling of about 1805 in the
new Stock Exchange. In 1831, at the age of sixty-nine and for reasons which remain obscure, he moved
to Milan. Whilst he exhibited frequently at the Academia di Brera and produced stage designs for the
Teatro della Scala, during this last period of his career he worked chiefly on small scale paintings and
probably began travelling again, to other cities in the Northern regions and possibly also to Rome and to
Florence. Like his contemporary, Giacomo Guardi, his diminutive views were greatly admired by visitors
from abroad doing the Grand Tour, but his superior technique, delight in detail and pictorial eloquence
suggests that he worked only to the highest standards and for a discerning audience.
The Colonnade dates from the 3rd century and probably originally formed part of a Roman Baths. The
columns were transported to their present location in the 4th Century to form part of the site of the
Basilica di San Lorenzo. In 1935 the adjacent buildings which had sprung up on both sides of the
Colonnade over the centuries and are visible in this gouache, were destroyed to provide more space
around the church. The columns, even today, are held in particular affection by the people of Milan as
evidence of the classical city of Mediolanum and a rare survivor of the destructive fury of the Goths, of
Barbarossa and the terrible bombardments of the Second World War.
The Colonnade before the demolition of the
adjacent buildings in 1935.
136

actual size
137

Giuseppe Bernardino Bison
Palmanova 1762-1844 Milan
46
View of the Campanile and the Piazza San Marco, Venice
Gouache on board.
145 x 193 mm. (5 3 /4 x 7 2 /3 in.)
Provenance: From an album originally said to have been assembled by the Duchess Stéphanie de
Beauharnais (1789-1860); thence by descent.
138

Giuseppe Bernardino Bison
Palmanova 1762-1844 Milan
47
View of the Duomo of Milan
Gouache on board.
145 x 193 mm. (5 3 /4 x 7 2 /3 in.)
Provenance: From an album originally said to have been assembled by the Duchess Stéphanie de
Beauharnais (1789-1860); thence by descent.
139

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
Montauban1780–1867 Paris
48
Portrait of the Marquise de Beaumont
Graphite. Signed and dated lower left: Ingres/1830.
269 x 212 mm. (10 ½ x 8 3 /8 in.)
Provenance: Private Collection, France, purchased in the early 20 th Century, then by descent.
A student of Jacques-Louis David, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres won the Prix de Rome in 1801 but
due to a lack of government funding he was unable to take up his scholarship at the Académie de France
in Rome until 1806. Although his pension expired in 1810, he remained in Rome for a further ten years.
The city was at this time ruled by the French, and he received several important official commissions.
With the French withdrawal from Rome in March 1814 and the fall of Napoleon, Ingres turned to making
portrait drawings of French and foreign visitors to the city. These pencil portraits, drawn with minute detail
as autonomous works of art, proved extremely popular and served to secure his livelihood. In 1820 he
received a commission for a large canvas of The Vow of Louis XIII, intended for the cathedral of his native
Montauban. Painted in Florence, where he spent four years, and sent to Paris to be exhibited at the Salon
of 1824, it won Ingres considerable praise and established his reputation as a painter. He then spent a
period of ten years in Paris, consolidating his reputation as a history painter and undertaking portrait
commissions but the venomous criticism of his painting The Martyrdom of St. Symphorien, commissioned
for the cathedral at Autun and shown at the Salon of 1834, led directly to his departure from Paris and the
opportune appointment as director of the Académie de France in Rome. Ingres remained in the post until
his final return to France in 1842. The last fifteen years of his career saw him firmly established as a highly
respected figure in artistic circles, and one of the foremost artists in France. For many years an influential
professor at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Ingres received the honour of a retrospective exhibition at the
Exposition Universelle of 1855. At his death, Ingres left a huge collection of his studio work comprising
nearly 4,000 drawings to the museum of his birthplace, Montauban, thereby illustrating his belief that
“the drawing is three fourths and a half of what constitutes painting” 1 .
The sitter in this portrait is identified by an inscription on the old frame, la Marquise de Beaumont
and portrays a certain Anne Armande Antoinette Hue de Miromesnil (1766-1830), wife of the Marquis
André de Beaumont (1761-1838), who inherited the title from his father, Anne-Claude de Beaumont. The
drawing was made during vthe last year of her life.
The portrait has much in common with others realised by Ingres at this time, for example, that of Madame
Jean-Baptiste Lepère in the Musée du Louvre, Paris, again dated 1830, that of Madame Chantal Marcotte, in a
private collection, dated 1834 2 and another, as here, previously unpublished portrait, of Madame Godinot, her
hair similarly dressed, from 1829 3 . In the present work, the Marquise is dressed with great care, with puffed
sleeves and a frilly indoor day cap and bonnet. The belt and hat are of a similar design to those depicted in
the portrait of Madame Ingres in the Musée Ingres, Montauban, dated 1835 4 . As with many of Ingres’s portrait
drawings, it is the face which is the true focus of his attention; here the folds, pleats and tucks of the Marquise’s
voluminous dress are described rapidly in long, curving lines while her elaborately curled hair and fine
features are defined with subtle and precise modelling, the expression – a slight smile and thoughtful eyes - is
defined with great sensitivity. The Marquise sits against pillows, her hands gently clasped, and with her deepset
eyes and thin face, are delicately enfolded in the large bonnet.
These years were significant for being a period in which Ingres’s reputation was particularly high for
portraiture; those he exhibited at the Salon were generally very well received, although sometimes
controversial; for example his 1832 portrait of Louis-François Bertin, now in the Louvre, greatly affected
people with its realism but numerous critics deplored it 5 . Ingres himself regarded portraiture as a “cursed” 6
activity, “Maudits portraits!” 4 , taking away precious time from history painting, but the portrait drawings,
which served the purpose of earning him a living, are now arguably his most loved works, and in the
words of Hans Naef, “one of the most glorious chapters in his career”.
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141

Friedrich Nerly
Hamburg 1807-1878
49
Stonecutters transporting a block of Marble to Rome for the sculptor Thorvaldsen.
Pen and black ink and grey and brown wash on paper. Signed and dated lower right in brown ink:
F. Nerly.f. Rom 1833. The block of marble inscribed: XXXIII/ Thorwaldsen/ a/ Roma
286 x 367 mm. (11 ¼ x 14 3 /8 in.)
Provenance: German Private Collection, bears collector’s mark with a crowned “B”. Laid down on
mount inscribed in a cartouche: Rome/ R. Nerly/1833.
Friedrich von Nerly began his career in Hamburg. He travelled to Rome in 1828, under the patronage
of Baron Carl Friedrich von Rumohr, through whom he made the acquaintance of Goethe. Nerly spent
the next six years in Rome, changing his name to lose the German von and settling into the community
of ex-patriot painters and sculptors; he even became head of the Cervaro festivals which were costume
parties established by the Ponte Molle Society to welcome newly arrived artists. In 1835 he moved to
Venice and established himself as a view painter, which is how he is generally now known. His son,
Friedrich Nerly the Younger (1824-1919) continued to work in the same vein and their paintings have at
times been confused.
The Danish sculptor Bartel Thorwaldsen (1770-1844) spent most of his career in Rome working in a
heroic Neoclassical style. He became the foremost artist in the field after the death of Canova in 1822
and maintained a large workshop in the stables of the Palazzo Barbarini. The English Grand Tourist,
Thomas Hope was his first important patron and a statue of Adonis carved for Ludwig of Bavaria is one
of his most impressive works along with the great commission for the sepulchral monument to Pius VII
carved for St Peter’s. Around the time this drawing was made, Thorwaldsen was at work on a series of
colossal sculptures of Christ and the Twelve Apostles commissioned by the Danish State for the rebuilt
Cathedral of Copenhagen.
The fine degree of finish and a painterly treatment of the wash suggest that this drawing, dated 1833,
was done as a work in its own right. The Thorvaldsen Museum in Copenhagen has an oil painting of the
same composition, but with numerous differences in detail, and which is believed to date from after
1831, the date of an earlier version in the Schwerin Staatliche Museen (Painting of 1831, 108 x 119cms) 1 .
The Thorvaldsen Museum consider that this composition created a considerable success for Nerly and
a third painted version, most probably later and with further differences, is in the Eckhart G. Grohmann
Collection at the Milwaukee School of Engineering 2 . The present drawing has a strong Neoclassical
atmosphere, restrained but heroic in style with a draughtsmanship which is curving and fluent and
entirely confident. Its pyramidal design is a magnificent compositional device lifting the straining oxen
and their labouring drivers onto an epic plane. The
imagined journey is presumably the transportation
of marble from one of the quarries at Carrara to
Rome, and the block would normally be loaded
onto a boat for most of the journey.
1. Friedrich Nerly, Thorvaldsen Museum, Copenhagen
Drawings by the elder Nerly appear rarely on the
market apart from, most recently, a fine study of
a Campagna horseman, with some watercolour,
which was given to the National Gallery, Washington
purchased from the Wolfgang Ratjen Collection 3 .
The present drawing is particularly unusual both for
its high degree of finish and its unusually anecdotal
subject, so redolent of the period and the community
of artists gathered in Rome.
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143

Honore-Victorin Daumier
Marseille 1808-1879 Valmondois
50
La Défense; The Defence
Pen and black and red ink and two shades of grey wash. Signed: h Daumier.
194 x 239 mm. (7 5 /8 x 9 3 /8 in.)
Provenance: Emile Strauss, Paris (bears label on old backing: Chenue, emballeur…/ Emile Straus/ l’avocat
à la barre); Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 3 rd -4 th June 1929, lot 4, ill. (150,000 frs.); With M. Knoedler & Co.
Inc., New York (label on old backing with title: Le Defenseur à la Barre); Mrs. Jean Alexander, New York;
sale, Sotheby’s, New York, 14 th May 1986, lot 109.; with Richard Thune.; The Hon. Ronald Lauder, New
York; Anonymous sale Christie’s New York, 5 th May 1998, lot 2.
Literature: E. Klossowski, Honoré Daumier, Munich, 1923, p. 100, no. 163; “Auktionsnachrichten”,
Kunst und Kunstler, XXVII, 1929, p. 370 (listed as Der Verteidiger); E. Fuchs, Der Maler Daumier (Nachtrag-
Supplement), Munich, 1930, p. 65, no. 320c.; K. E. Maison, Honoré Daumier. Catalogue raisonné of the
Paintings, Drawings and Watercolours, London, 1967, II, no. 667, pl. 255.; Daumier 1808-1879, exhibition
catalogue, Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada and elsewhere, 1999-2000, p. 447, no. 289.
Exhibited: Paris, Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Peintures, aquarelles, dessins et lithographies des maîtres français
de la caricature et de la peinture de moeurs au XIXe sicle, 1888, no. 391 (titled La Plaidoirie, with framed
dimensions); Paris, Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Exposition Daumier, May 1901, p. 48, no. 274.
Lawyers and characters of the Parisian court system constitute one of Daumier’s most consistent bodies of work.
In Paris his family lived opposite the Palais de Justice and the young Daumier used to visit the court and sketch
the figures that populated it. Between 1832 and 1833 the artist spent six months in prison as a result of having
caricatured King Louis-Philippe. This personal experience with the French judicial system inspired him to visit the
courts more often afterwards, and for three years he amassed drawings and sketches of scenes from the tribunals
that he re-used for more finished compositions later in his career when he began to work for Charivari magazine
which published his lithographs and especially the series Les Gents de Justice (1845-8) and Physionomies du Palais
de Justice (1852). When in the 1860s the artist’s contract with Charivari was interrupted, Daumier concentrated
on executing drawings for connoisseurs and collectors whose demand for these subjects was very strong. The
French art critic and novelist Champfleury, a keen supporter of the work of Daumier, whom he repeatedly praised
in his writings, is recorded as asking the artist, on behalf of a friend, for two drawings of tribunal scenes 1 . The
present work, dated to the years 1864-5, belongs to the category of such highly finished and polished drawings
and watercolours which were generally executed for the market. These were the years, as was described by
Maison, “when his genius as a draughtsman was at its zenith” 2 and Daumier executed the finest of the series of
Court Scenes, Third Class Carriages and Don Quixote. The composition of the present drawing recalls that of the
lithograph Je crois vous avoir suffisamment prouvé ..., published in Charivari in 1864, in which a lawyer is shown
defending a man whose wife has repeatedly betrayed him. In the present drawing, the lawyer stands in the center,
overshadowing the humble client who sits next to him, his gaze concentrated, his face almost mask-like with
anxiety. Three judges sit in a line in the background, stern and implacable. The lawyer is shown pointing both
index figures at the table on which sit the symbols of his profession: a black hat, representing the power given to
him by the profession, and some papers likely to contain proof of his client’s defence. As Colta Ives has written,
“these figures finally represent for us neither lawyers nor judges, but personifications of human weakness dressed
up in dark robes” 3 . A pun is concealed in a small detail of the drawing where he translates the French saying
“brasser du vent” (hot air) by depicting a cloud in front of his open mouth with a little touch of white bodycolour.
A related unfinished sketch with a very similar composition also entitled The Defence and dated circa 1865 is
in the Samuel Courtauld Trust, The Courtauld Gallery, London, but there the defendant appears as an even more
desperate individual to whom the lawyer turns, taking his hand and pointing out a painting hanging over the
judges at their bench 4 . Emile Strauss (1844-1929), who seems to have been the first to own this drawing, was
himself a lawyer. He was an acquaintance of the Rothschild family and best known for having married Geneviève
Halévy, previously the wife of the composer Georges Bizet, and “grande Salonnière” of her time.
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145

Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas
Paris 1834-1917
51
Après Le bain, femme s’essuyant
Pastel on paper laid down on board, stamped Degas (lower left)
720 x 580 mm. (28 3 /8 x 22 7 /8 in.)
Provenance: Sale Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, Atelier Edgar Degas, 1re Vente, 6t h -8 h May 1918, lot
172; Roger G. Gompel, Paris: Private Collection, France.
Exhibited: Paris, Musée de l’Orangerie, Degas, 1937, no. 155; Bern, Berner Kunstmuseum, Degas,
1951-52, no. 34, illustrated in the catalogue.
Literature: Paul-André Lemoisne, Degas et son œuvre, Paris, 1946, vol. II, no. 707, illustrated p. 403;
Robert Gordon & Andrew Forge, Degas, New York, 1988, illustrated in colour p. 247.
The wide range of rich and vibrant tones and the beautifully balanced and proportioned treatment of the
woman’s body put this amongst the finest examples from Degas’s celebrated series of bathers. Unlike his
depictions of the ballet and the races, the bather scenes were usually staged in the artist’s studio. Despite
this staging, Après le bain, femme s’essuyant recreates the
spontaneity of the act and the voyeuristic experience of
watching a woman at her toilette. Georges Jeanniot, who had
witnessed Degas at work on his pastels, reminisced about his
technique: “Degas was very concerned with the accuracy of
movements and postures. He studied them endlessly. I have
seen him work with a model, trying to make her assume
the gestures of a woman drying herself […]. You see the two
shoulderblades from behind; but the right shoulder, squeezed
by the weight of the body, assumes an unexpected outline
that suggests a kind of acrobatic gesture” 1 . Indeed, the artist
often applied his knowledge of the female body, attained
through observing dancers, to his images of bathers, and in
the present work he depicted his model with her upper body
subtly leaning to the right as she dries herself with a towel.
Though following in the steps of traditional academic study
of the nude, these works play upon the grandeur of classical
tradition with the particular immediacy of the domestic scene.
1. Edgar Degas, Study for Après le bain, femme
s’essuyant, Private Collection, Dallas.
Unlike most of his later pastels in which Degas focuses almost
entirely on the model, in the present work he broadens
the scope of the composition by depicting the woman’s
surroundings. Robert Gordon and Andrew Forge wrote about
Degas’s arrangements for these compositions: “The studio
furniture that made Degas’s imaginary bedrooms was simple:
a round bath and a long one, an armchair or two, a settee, a
screen. Fabrics, heavy curtains played an important part” The
long bath, featuring in the present work, provided a dynamic
element in several depictions of bathers. “It is deep and
hollow like an architectural niche on its back. (…] There is
a moving exchange between the simple opening of the bath
and the vigorous form of the naked woman”. In the present
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147

composition, the oval shape of the bath, disappearing behind a colourful screen, beautifully echoes the
curve of the woman’s body. The lower half of her figure is partially hidden by the towel she is holding,
which is in turn echoed by the robe casually thrown over the sofa in the background.
The extraordinary energy of the present work is derived from the highly abstracted treatment of the surface,
blending the fabric of the wall-paper, curtain, screen, floor, robe and towel into a continuous decorative
pattern. Whilst the contours of the woman’s body, the armchair and the bathtub are clearly delineated,
the rest of the composition is coloured in spontaneous strokes of bright pigment. The background is
depicted with a degree of abstraction, with accentuated horizontal and vertical lines which provide a
contrast to the curving line of the woman and the bath. Such a decorative treatment of the background,
and the intimate character of the composition were highly influential to the avant-garde painters over the
following decades, particularly the intimiste interiors of Pierre Bonnard.
The particularly patterned surfaces seen in the present work, with the profusion of fabrics and textures
playing as a foil to the intensely studied modelling of the body, show this pastel to date from around
1895. Close comparisons may be made with the Après le bain, femme s’essuyant la nuque, in the Musée
d’Orsay and the Petit déjeuner après le bain in the Kunstmuseum, Winterthur, both dating from this
same period and having the same deep and multilayered range of colours. In the catalogue of the recent
exhibition held at the Musée d’Orsay and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, George Shackleford writes of
the pastels of these years, describing the way in which Degas specifically utilises, with great inventiveness,
the various prop materials, as well as creating a subtle telescoping of the spaces defined by the deep and
very large bath, the ample sofa-effects - maybe inspired by the Japanese prints hashira-e which Degas
admired - as here, in particular, the folding screen into which the bath seems almost to disappear 3 .
Degas made numerous studies for this particular composition, twelve of these can be traced through the
Estate sales 4 , the most closely related of which is a virtually actual size detail of the nude woman in the
pastel, executed in charcoal and brown pastel on tracing paper, and now in a private collection in Dallas
(fig.1) 5 .
Après le bain, femme s’essuyant remained in the artist’s collection until his death in 1917, and was
included in the first of four auctions of the contents of Degas’s studio, held in Paris the following year.
It was subsequently acquired by Roger G. Gompel, a renowned collector of Impressionist art in France
at the beginning of the twentieth century. He was the director of the Paris-France Society, the company
that owned several department stores including Les Trois Quartiers and Aux Dames de France. Gompel’s
collection was particularly strong in works by Degas and several major pastels which belonged to him
are now located in important museums such as The Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Art
Institute of Chicago. This work remained in Gompel’s family until it’s very recent sale.
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149

Giovanni Boldini
Ferrara 1842-1931 Paris
52
A Lady Standing and Wearing a Blue Feathered Hat and a Veil
Watercolour on paper. Signed Boldini at lower right.
510 x 355 mm. (20 x 14 in.)
Provenance: Sale J.J. Terris et F. Courchet, catalogue of the Cabinet d’un amateur parisien, Hall of the
Savoy Hotel, Nice, 24 th to 28 th June 1942, no.219, according to the period label on the old backing board.
Born in Ferrara, Giovanni Boldini received his training from his father Antonio, a painter of religious subject.
His talent was soon recognized and, at the age of eighteen, he was already known in his native town as an
accomplished portraitist. Boldini travelled to Florence in 1862, where he formed close friendships with
artists of the revolutionary movement of the Macchiaioli, such as Giovanni Fattori, Telemaco Signorini
and Silvestro Lega. An astute businessman and unabashed self-promoter, Boldini soon realized that, to
reach a truly international audience he would have to relocate to Paris, a city which was fast becoming
the nucleus for the European artistic scene and also the economic focus for the leading dealers of the
day. After a trip to London in 1869, where he admired and assimilated the work of Gainsborough and
Reynolds, in 1871, Boldini settled in the French capital, primarily though not exclusively working for the
dealer, Goupil, like several other Italian artists such as De Nittis, Zandomeneghi and Mancini and for
whom he painted landscapes and minute, essentially fanciful genre scenes in the manner of Meissonier.
In 1874, Boldini exhibited for the first time to great public acclaim at the Salon du Champs-de-Mars,
and in the following years he travelled to Germany, where he met Adolphe von Menzel and to Holland,
further refining his style by studying the portraiture of Frans Hals. The artist befriended other society
portrait painters such as Paul-César Helleu and James A. McNeill Whistler, and became a close friend
of Degas who truly admired his work and once said of his friend: “Ce diable d’italien est un monstre de
talent”. By the 1880s, Boldini had begun to paint his celebrated portraits of society beauties. With a sharp
eye, bold, virtuoso brushstrokes and typically flamboyant style, Boldini captured not only the character
and vitality of the sitters, but also the spontaneity and evanescent spirit of a magnificently decadent
and sophisticated society that had gravitated towards Paris in the last decade of the nineteenth century.
Among his numerous portraits, those of Giuseppe Verdi, Whistler, Consuelo Vanderbilt, the Duchess of
Marlborough, Count Robert de Montesquiou, Princess Bibesco and the Marchesa Casati, are but a few of
the artist’s most famous sitters. Indeed, by the early years of the twentieth century, Boldini had become
the most fashionable portrait painter of Belle Époque Paris, achieving the kind of success enjoyed by
his friend John Singer Sargent in London. He had a self confessed love of high society, champagne and
elegant ladies but was a prolific and tireless painter who remained active to the end of his long life,
though in the last few years, failing eyesight meant he restricted himself to working in charcoal. In 1929,
aged 86, he married for the first time; at his wedding speech, with charismatic wit, he said: “ It is not my
fault if I am so old, its something which has happened to me all at once” 1 .
Boldini was equally at ease with watercolour as he was with oil paint, as can be seen in this vibrant
portrait. Painted on an undefined background of rapid and assured brush strokes of grey-brown and
black watercolour, it shows a lady posing, her left hand on her waist, wearing an elegant grey coat with a
black velvet collar and a blue feathered hat. Half amused and half defiant, she appears confident, almost
as if she were challenging the artist in front of her. Sophisticated and attractive, this lady belongs with
a large number of both famous and unknown women whom the artist depicts in the early years of the
20 th century in numerous freely executed portraits which have become archetypes of the Belle Epoque
period. By then, Boldini was highly sought after as a portraitist, measuring himself alongside illustrious
figures such as John Singer Sargent. This lady is probably one of the many who admired Boldini’s bravura
and his ability to interpret woman’s beauty and elegance.
150

151

53
Auguste Rodin
Paris 1840-1917 Meudon
Femme Vase immergée dans l’eau: Woman Standing in Water, her Arms behind her Back, her
Hair gathered up at the sides of her round face
Watercolour and pencil.
322 x 250 mm. (12 5 /8 x 10 7 /8 in.)
Literature: This work will be included in Christina Buley-Uribe’s forthcoming Catalogue Raisonné de
dessins et peintures d’Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) as catalogue number 110903.
Exhibited: Arles, Musée départemental Arles antique, Rodin La Lumière de l’Antique, April-September
2013, cat.166.
Rodin wholeheartedly acknowledged the importance of drawing in his work. Introducing an exhibition
of his studies held in Paris in 1910, he wrote: It is quite simple, my drawings are the key to my work ….
I have drawn all my life; I started my life drawing. 1 Rodin drew tirelessly throughout his career but in the
1890s his draughtsmanship underwent a radical change; he abandoned the classically inspired work
of the 1880s, the Michelangelesque forms, intense penwork and dramatic use of black wash and white
gouache and developed an increasingly liberated, spontaneous and extremely economic style using
thin, wire-like outlines and transparent watercolour washes. A journalist writing in 1914 described his
method: His eyes fixed on the model to whom he does not prescribe a particular pose; without looking
at his sheet of paper, he often rims an entire body in one single line. Other times, he sketches, always at
one go, the essence of the passing movement; then, impatient to get to the heart of life again, he only
summarily indicates the volumes which this essential line generates around itself ... 3 and in Rodin’s own
words, in 1901, “…my drawings are only my way of testing myself. They are my way of proving to myself
how far this incorporation of the subtle secrets of the human form has taken place within me. … I try to
see the figure as a mass, as volume … my object is to test to what extent my hands already feel what my
eyes see ...” 4 .
Christina Buley-Uribe dates this drawing to around 1900, as part of the series of Rodin’s femmes-vases,
studies of women with their arms hidden and their chests held forward. Christina Buley-Ulribe points
out that for Rodin the femme-vase figures are an emblem of eroticism taken from the Antique, a form of
female pendant to his figures of Eros and on this and other occasions linked to the themes of violence
and eroticism which were in vogue in literature at the turn of the century 5 . . She notes the delicacy of
the shadows used here to define the breasts and pubis and the nature of the corkscrew arrangement
of the figure’s hair, seen to very similar effect in two further drawings of the period both in the Musée
Rodin 6 , each inscribed respectively by the artist: Isis and jardin des supplices. The latter title is a novel
by Octave Mirbeau on just such themes: murder, torture, masochism, sadism, which was published
in a second edition in 1902 with Rodin’s illustrations including a femme-vase as the frontispiece. The
manner in which the figure in the present watercolour is depicted emerging from water sets it apart
from those two drawings and Christina Buley-Uribe suggests that the small areas of dark watercolour at
her right hip could be interpreted as pieces of seaweed particularly as leaf forms in pencil are visible
through the colour. Rodin clearly found the idea of semi-submersion particularly intriguing as there are
considerable numbers of drawings of this kind in the Musée Rodin in Paris: two further studies are cited
by Christina Buley-Uribe, one of a figure with her head thrown back and another similar, on her knees 7 .
In his innumerable studies of female nudes, swathes of delicate watercolour wash often act as a colour
background to highlight the figure, or are suggested as abandoned robes but here the delicate line of the
darker wash, dividing the sheet, brings a subtle anecdotal element and a strengthening of the atmosphere
of Japonism. .
152

153

Andre Lhote
Bordeaux 1885-1962 Paris
54
A Street in a Country Village
Watercolour. Signed and dated: A. LHOTE. 10.
412 x 250 mm. (16 1 /2 x 9 7 /8 in.)
Exhibited: Nored Fine Arts. Inc., 55 East 74 th Street, New York, no.7407, as “Route de la Campagne”.
At just thirteen years of age, André Lhote embarked upon his artistic career, apprenticed to a local
sculpture studio as a woodcarver, before attending the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Bordeaux, where he
studied decorative arts. In 1906, inspired by primitive African sculpture and by the work of Paul Gauguin,
Lhote turned to painting. In their rhythmic but vigorous brushstrokes, simplification of shape and intensity
of colour, his early works are a complex digestion of Fauvism and of the work of Cézanne, whose
retrospective at the Salon d’Automne of 1907 had made a profound effect on the young artist. During
this time, Lhote made acquaintance with a number of French writers and critics, such as Henri Fournier,
Jacques Rivière, and Joseph Granie - it was Granie who, in 1909, secured a year’s scholarship for Lhote
at the Villa Medici Libre, an academic programme for unmarried artists. In this dynamic and forwardthinking
artistic environment, Lhote met Raoul Dufy, who in turn proved instrumental in introducing him
to the more progressive artists and poets of the day such as Robert Delaunay, Jean Metzinger, Henri Le
Fauconnier, Fernand Léger and Albert Gleizes. In 1910, Lhote held his first solo exhibition at the Galerie
Druet, in Paris. His work was met with critical acclaim and he instantly won the full support of the highly
influential critics André Salmon and Guillaime Apollinaire. His position in the Parisian art world was thus
established. A year later, Lhote participated in the Salon des Indépendants. His work was exhibited next
door to the infamous Salle 41, where the seminal images of Cubism were first unveiled. After learning
the extent of their common interests, Lhote and these artists quickly became friends. Their alliance was
cemented in the Salon d’Automne of the same year, where paintings by Gleizes, Leger, Metzinger and
Duchamps were shown alongside Lhote’s “Port of Bordeaux”. In 1912, Lhote joined the ironically titled
“Section d’Or” and his collaboration with such radical protagonists as Kupka and Archipenko saw the
concepts of Cubism pushed to new limits of complete abstraction. Given the epithet “the academician
of Cubism” by Robert Rosenblum, Lhote became a perpetual exponent of Synthetic or “Soft” Cubism,
both in his erudite literary works on the role of painting in modern society, and in his evocative paintings.
He regularly expounded his critical and aesthetic beliefs in the journal, “Nouvelle Revue Française” of
which he was a co-founder, and he remained an enthusiastic defender of Modernism throughout his life,
causing quite a scandal, in 1935, by giving a lecture entitled ’”Is it necessary to burn down the Louvre?”.
A considerable painter and outspoken critic, Lhote was also a dedicated teacher. In 1922 he opened the
“Académie Montparnasse”, thus providing a vehicle in which to disseminate his style and technique
to many young artists, the most notable of whom being the art deco painter, Tamara de Lempicka. In
1955, Lhote’s work was awarded the ”Grand Prix National de Peinture”. He was also given the honour
of “President of the International Association of Painters, Engravers and Sculptors” by the UNESCO
commission.
The present watercolour dates from 1910, an important year for the artist as it marked his first exhibition
in Paris. Lhote has reduced the landscape to a series of interacting and simplified forms. The palette is
a synthesis of greens and greys while the lightness of touch and the construction of shapes absolutely
convey the image of a sunlit country road and reveal Lhote’s absorption of the work of Cézanne.
154

155

Lucian Freud
Berlin 1922-2011 London
55
A Walk to the Office
Conté crayon on paper.
224 x 141mm. (8 7 /8 x 5 ½ in.)
Provenance: Private collection, from where acquired by another private collector in the 1950s.
Exhibited: London, The London Gallery, E.L.T. Mesens presents four exhibitions: James Glesson and Robert
Kippel/ Lucian Freud/ John Pemberton/ Cawthra Mulockr late 1948 1 ; possibly also the Zwemmer Gallery,
London. 2
Literature: W. Samson, The Equilibriad, London 1948 (a reproduction of the present work illustrated in
colour, unpaged; C. Lampert ed., Lucian Freud Works on Paper, exhibition catalogue, London, South Bank
Centre, 1988, no.10, illustrated p.12; M. Omer, Lucien Freud, exhibition catalogue, Tel Aviv Museum of
Art, Tel Aviv 1996-1997, illustrated in colour p.107; M. Holborn ed., Lucien Freud on Paper, London 2008,
the relevant pages from The Equilibriad illustrated in colour, p.26.
Executed with astonishing skill and subtlety, this drawing is an archetype of Lucian Freud’s brilliance as a
draughtsman and his precocious ability. In his introduction to the catalogue of Lucian Freud Portraits, held
at the National Portrait Gallery, London in 2012, John Richardson wrote of the post-war years as being a
period where “Lucian seemed destined to be a draughtsman rather than a painter”. Freud himself cited the
graphic drawings of Dürer as a central influence on his art.
Freud’s first significant commission, which he received in 1943, had been to illustrate a book of poems: The
Glass Tower by Nicholas Moore and illustrations and literary projects formed for a short time, a significant
part of Frued’s artistic development. The present drawing dates from 1948 and was made, along with four
others, to illustrate William Sansom’s surreal novel The Equilibriad, which was published by the Hogarth Press
the publishing house established by Leonard and Virginia Woolf. Sanson was a friend of the poet Stephen
Spender whom Freud had known since 1940. Paul, the hero of Sansom’s novel, in a Kafkaesque turn of
events, wakes up one morning to find he can only walk at an angle of 45°. With this figure, which became
the first illustration in the book, Freud renders the description of the protagonist moving like “a doll lurching
on its circular weighted base” as he swings to catch a ball kicked accidentally towards him by a young boy,
steadying himself on the railings. Freud used an acquaintance of his, an architect, as model for Paul and for
the ironwork copied details from the balcony attached to his studio at Delamere Terrace in Paddington.
The present work has not been exhibited since it was shown at the London Gallery in 1948 and apparently
also at the Zwemmer Gallery, soon after that. The smoothness of the paper throws up the extraordinarily
subtle modelling which Freud achieved using a Conté crayon. Square in shape to allow sharpness of line
the crayons are made from compressed graphite or charcoal; Seurat used the medium most frequently for
his drawings and Freud took it up it in the mid-1940s as an even finer alternative to pen and ink. Nicholas
Penny described the drawings of this period as seeming “to depict a tense situation in a plot frustratingly
unknown to us”. 4 This collision of medium, style and atmosphere, produced, in the present sheet, a most
perfect work. Justifiably, the poet and art crtic Herbert Read, described Lucien Freud in vol.II of his 1951
book on British Contemporary Art, as “the Ingres of Existentialism”. This was at a time when drawings
still formed the main body of his work, “when he drew like a young man possessed …” as described by
Sebastian Smee: “As Freud hit his stride in his twenties, his drawing underwent a process of contraction
and concentration, conferring on his best pictures an almost electrical charge of objective intensity” 5 . Two
years after the publication of The Equilibriad, Freud largely stopped drawing and set himself to painting:
“The idea of doing paintings where you’re conscious of the drawing and not the paint just irritated me. So
I stopped drawing for many, many years” 6 . Freud moved even further away from drawing when in 1958,
inspired by Francis Bacon, he swapped fine sable brushes for hog bristle. 7
156

actual size
157

Notes
1.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
1.
2.
3.
No. 1 Master of The Female Half-Lengths
See Max Friedlander, translated by Heinz Norden, Early Netherlandish Painting, vol. XII, Leyden and Brussels 1975, vol.XII.
No. 2 Alonso Sanchez Coello
See Giuseppe Bertini, La Galleria del Duca di Parma, Bologna 1987, p.258, no.566.
See Jonathan Brown, Painting in Spain, 1500-1700, New Haven and London, 1998, p.56.
See E. Perez Sanchez, in the Dictionary of Art, edited by Jane Turner, Oxford 2003
See Maria Kusche, Retratos y Retradores, Alonso Sánchez Coello, Madrid 2003, p.307, fig.266 and p.215, fig.179, the portrait there
given to Sophonisba Anguissola.
Emails from Aileen Ribeiro, Annemarie Jordan and Anna Reynolds, 2012.
See Maria Kusche, idem., Madrid 2003, p.81, fig.38 and p.315, fig.274. And for the use of filigree gold in a headdress see the
portrait of D. Joana de Austria with a Page, in Annemarie Jordan, Retrato de Corte em Portugal, O Legado de António Moro (1552-
1572), Lisbon 1994, fig.5, p.34.
See:http://www.royalcollection.org.uk/microsites/treasures/MicroObject.asp?item=1&themeid=643&object=405798&row=1 and
the Dictionary of Art, loc. cit..
See G. Bertini, op. cit., in note 1.
See G. Bertini, op. cit., Bologna 1987, p.157, no.220.
Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte. La collezione Farnese. La scuola emiliana: i dipinti. I disegni, Napoli, 1994, p. 140; La collezione
Farnese. I dipinti lombardi, liguri, veneti, toscani, umbri, romani, fiamminghi. Altre scuole, Napoli, 1995, pp. 19, 96, 123, 133, 177,
199, 200. See also, G. Bertini, op. cit., Bologna 1987, pp.50ff.
This extensive information provided by Professor Bertini in a series of emails of January – March 2012.
G. Bertini, “A note on Bertoia”, in The Burlington Magazine, CXXVII, 1985, p. 448.
W. Buchanan, Memoirs of Painting, with a chronological history of the importation of pictures by the Great Masters into England
since the French Revolution, London, 1824.
G. Bertini, ”I quadri farnesiani nell’appartamento di Dorotea Sofia di Neoburgo nel Palazzo Ducale di Parma”, in Aurea Parma,
LXXX, 1996, pp. 271-276.
See Maria Kusche, op.cit., p.86, fig.44 (oil on panel, 80 x 63cms.). Interestingly the sitter holds an elaborate set of reins, and wears
a coat, giving a rather masculine touch, one perhaps indicative of her imminent appointment as Regent.
In the Pinacoteca Stuard and the Pinacoteca Nazionale, both in Parma, see link wikipedia.org/wiki/Infanta_Maria_of_Guimarães,
the portrait in the Pinacoteca Stuard is in oil on canvas and attributed to the workshop of Anthonis Mor. The Pinacoteca Nazionale
image is a miniature.
See Annemarie Jordan, Retrato de Corte em Portugal, O Legado de António Moro (1552-1572), Lisbon 1994, fig.8, p.37, and for
comparison p. 44, fig.19; and for a portrait of Maria d’Aviz’s father, Infante Don Duarte (Edward) de Portugal, see p.96, fig.59. See
also Maria Kusche, op. cit., p.84, fig.43, for the portrait of Isabella di Braganza in the Prado.
From a series of notes on the painting kindly supplied by Annemarie Jordan in July 2012.
No. 4 Guido Reni
See Malvasia, op. cit., under Literature.
See Christiansen, op.cit., under Literature.
See Carlo Cesare Malvasia, The Life of Guido Reni, translated and with an introduction by Catherine Engass and Robert Engass,
Pennsylvania, 1980, p.41.
See Malvasia, op.cit., 1980, The Life of Guido Reni, p. 41.
Anne Summerscale, Malvasia’s Life of the Carracci, Commentary and Translation, Pennsylvania 2000, p.289.
See Carlo Cesare Malvasia, The Life of Guido Reni, op. cit., 1980, p. 126.
Stephen Pepper, see Literature, op. cit. 1969.
See Pepper op. cit.,1969, p.48.
For the close relation to Ludovico and another related treatment by Reni of the theme of the Coronation of the Virgin with a host of
Musical Angels, see Keith Andrews, “An Early Guido Reni Drawing” The Burlington Magazine, vol. 103, no.704 (Nov 1961) pp.461-
467.
See Pepper, op. cit.1984, cat 14.
See Pepper, op. cit., 1984, cat.26.
See Anne Summerscale, op. cit., p.147.
See Zoia Belyakova, Grand Duchess Maria Nikolayevna and her Palace in St Petersburg, St. Petersburg, 1994, see pp.189-190
The Stockholm 1917 exhibition catalogue, as part of a description of the fate of the Leuchtenberg paintings after the death of
Maximilian suggests that Maria Nikolaevna immediately transported all the pictures with her when she left Russia for Italy and set
up house in Florence at the Villa Quarto. This cannot, however, be correct since the entire collection was seen by Waagen in St.
Petersburg in 1863.
No. 5 Lorenzo Lippi
Filippo Baldinucci, Notizie dei Professori del disegno da Cimabue in qua, edition published in Florence, 1847, p.262.
See op. cit., Literature, cat.136.
Inv.GB4727, red chalk (410 x 250 mm).
1.
No. 6 Giuseppe Assereto
See Soprani, Le vite de’ Pittori, Scoltori e Architetti Genovesi e de’ forestieri che in Genova operarono, Genova 1674, p.172:
“Giuseppe Axereto suo figlio apprese I principij del Padre per proseguire la professione della pittura, & invero mostrava straordinaria
disposizione di seguitare lo stile Paterno. Dissegnava molto aggiustato …”
158

2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
“Il Ritrovamento della coppa nel sacco di Beniamino e una traccia per la ricostruzione del catalogo del Maestro di San Giacomo
all Marina (Giuseppe Assereto?)”, Tre opere de La Pinacoteca, Napoli 2009, pp.29-78.
Tiziana Zennaro, Gioacchino Assereto e i pittori della sua scuola, Soncino 2011, 2 vols., I, pp. 80-84, vol. II, pp. 585-624, catt.
E1 - E47.
See the witness involved in the trial of Giuseppe Assereto who was asked to complete some paintings left unfinished by his father.
The works referred to were described as “designate solo di terra” (cfr. Tiziana Zennaro, 2011, pp.777-779, docc. 55.56).
See Zennaro, op. cit., 2011, pp.609-610, cat.E31, Fig.E31, pl.CXXXVI.
See Zennaro, op.cit., 2011, p.599, cat.E18, fig. E 18, pl. CXXVI.
See Zennaro, op. cit., 2011, p.605, ca.E26, fig.E26, pl.CXXX-CXXXII.
1.
2.
3.
4.
No. 7 Govaert Flinck
List of Copies:
A. On canvas, 71.1 x 60.3 cm. Sir Arthur du Cros, Bt., Craigwell House, Aldwick, Sussex; Christie’s, London, 18 th February 1944,
lot 122, as Salomon Koninck (unsold). Sir William Edmund Butlin (1899-1980), before 1964 (his label on the reverse of the frame,
dating from before his knighthood in that year). Anonymous sale; Christie’s, London, 9 th April 2003, lot 32, as “Follower of Govaert
Flinck” (sold £25,095 including premium).
B.On canvas, 77.5 x 64.8 cm. Variously attributed to Flinck and Salomon Koninck. (Possibly) with Kunsthandel Paul Rusch,
Dresden, as Koninck, according to an annotation in the RKD files. Christopher William Vane, 1st Baron Barnard, CMG,OBE,MC,TD
(1888-1964), Raby Castle; Kemp, London, 30 th March 1922, lot 51, “Govert Flink. A Burgomaster, quarter length, grey hair, beard
and moustache, flat red velvet cap, brown velvet dress, white linen ruffles, jewelled neck chain, ring on right fore finger, head
resting on left hand. Canvas 30 1/2 in. by 25 1/2 in.”. Literature: J.W. Von Moltke, Govaert Flinck, Amsterdam, 1965, p. 122-23,
no. 269, illustrated.
C.On canvas, 60.3 x 50.8 cm. Mrs. N. Kraucevicius, Australia, 1962, as “Bol”, where recorded in a file in the Art Gallery of New
South Wales.
D. On canvas, 61 x 52.1 cm. Count Nicholas N. Zouboff, Russia, before 1900, and by descent to Olga Zouboff-Olsoufieff, by
whom given to Natalie Olsoufieff-Krauce, and by descent; Christie’s, New York, 18 th May 1994, lot 193, as “Circle of Christian
Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich (1712-1774) - An old Man before a Casement. After a painting by Govaert Flinck formerly in the collection
of Lord Barnard, London, 1922” (sold $31,150).
E.By Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich, after Flinck (untraced) Engraved: H. Dawe, for Gems of the Old Masters, 1833/34, part II,
no. 4, “A Dutch Burgomaster”, after Dietrich, after Koninck.
A. Houbraken, De Groote Schouburgh de Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen..., II, Amsterdam, 1718-1721, p. 18.
See J. Bauch and D. Eckstein, “Woodbiological investigations on panels of Rembrandt Paintings”, in Wood Science and Technology,
15, 1981, pp. 251-63). Rembrandt’s paintings on poplar include the Portrait of Maria Trip, from circa 1639, Rijksmuseum,
Amsterdam.
Gotzkowsky Provenance:
Born into an impoverished family of Polish nobility in Konitz (Chojnice), Gotzkowsky was orphaned at the age of five and moved
to live with relatives in Dresden and then Berlin, where at fourteen he began to work in his brother’s jewellery and trinket shop; by
the mid-1740s, he found himself in the business of producing luxury lace and velvet for an elite courtly clientele. Asked by King
Frederick the Great to promote the Prussian silk trade in competition with France, Gotzkowsky founded a factory employing 1,500
people, and subsequently advised the King on toll levies and import restrictions. The porcelain factory which he founded to rival
Meissen porcelain production was acquired by the crown in 1761 and lives on as the Königliche Porzellan-Manufaktur (KPM). In
1755, Frederick, who had decided to build a gallery of Old Masters for Sanssouci, his summer palace at Potsdam, commissioned
Gotzkowsky to act as his agent and advisor in the purchase of suitable pictures. Gotzkowsky seems to have thrown himself into
this new challenge with a passion, and by 1756 Frederick had received the first group of paintings. Gotzkowsky continued buying
for the King; however, the Seven Years’ War, which pitted Frederick’s armies against those of the Russian Empire, placed a strain
on Prussian state finances, and in 1761 Frederick was forced to decline the large group of works which Gotzkowsky had collected
in the intervening period. As the war drew to a close in 1763, Gotzkowsky entered into a new scheme to invest in the acquisition
of military stores (grain in particular) which had been left on the front by the withdrawing Russian troops. This venture proved
disastrous; the grain had gone bad and prices had fallen anyway, leaving Gotzkowsky with no profits and a large debt to the Russian
treasury. Catherine, acting through her diplomats V.S. Dolgoruky and M.I. Vorontsov, saw a solution to “l’affaire Gotzkowski” in the
purchase of the pictures assembled for Frederick the Great -- which also allowed her to demonstrate to her Prussian counterpart that
even in the aftermath of the Seven Years’ War, Russia had the financial resources which Prussia then lacked. In 1764, Gotzkowsky
handed over to Dolgoruky 317 pictures, valued at 171,900 Reichstaler. His finances restored in some measure, Gotzkowsky went
on to collect further pictures, possessing as many as 230 in his house in Berlin by 1766. He went bankrupt again in 1767, and
wrote a lively autobiography, Geschichte eines patriotischen Kaufmanns, published in 1768 and 1769, in which he states that he
had paid 180,000 Reichstaler of his debt to the Russian treasury in pictures. By August 1764 the pictures were in Saint Petersburg
in the care of the civil servant Betsky, and it was probably at this time that a list was composed by Jacob von Stählin (1709-1785),
the polyglot scientist, musicologist, connoisseur and court intellectual who had been the tutor, between 1742 and 1745, and
subsequently the librarian, of Catherine’s husband, the future Tsar Peter III. Stählin is sometimes credited with nurturing Catherine’s
knowledge of the fine arts, and amongst his papers are inventories pertaining to many of her most important purchases of paintings.
His list of Gotzkowsky’s pictures, which remains in the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences (op. cit.), closely matches that
which was probably composed on Gotzkowsky’s instruction before the collection left Berlin (Specification, Staatsarchiv, Berlin,
op. cit.). Although the number of pictures in the Gotzkowsky purchase is sometimes given as 225 in literature on the history of the
Hermitage, both early lists enumerate 317 pictures, including 90 which are not described in any detail. In both manuscripts Flinck’s
An old man at a casement can be identified with an entry for one of the thirteen works listed as by Rembrandt, “1. alter Mann, der
mit dem Kopf auf der linken hand ruht Extra fein gemahlt”, with matching dimensions. The picture is listed under the non-sequential
number 18, which may be Gotzkowsky’s own inventory number. The qualification “Extra fein gemahlt” (“extra fein gemahlt” (“extra
159

finely painted”) is reflected in the valuation of 600 Thalers, more than the twice the amount stipulated for each of a pair of portraits
by Rembrandt of larger size (Specification, op. cit., no. 565). Where Gotzkowsky sourced his pictures is not always clear. The Feast
of Esther now in Moscow is distinguished by an unbroken, fully documented provenance stretching back to Rembrandt’s patron
Jan Jacobsz. Hinlopen, and was bought by Gotzkowsky in the posthumous sale of the collection of Gerard Hoet in 1760, where
he also acquired Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife and other works by Rembrandt, invariably at high, hard-won prices. An old man at a
casement does not appear in either of the first catalogues of Gotzkowsky’s collection written by Matthias Oesterreich (1757 and
1759, respectively), and so must have been acquired by him in the period 1759-1763, probably at auction. Freiherr Bernhard von
Köhne, the Hermitage Curator of Paintings who first rediscovered the story of the Gotzkowsky acquisition in the 1870s, was to write
that upon receiving Frederick’s commission to collect pictures in 1755, Gotzkowsky entered into an exchange of letters with “fast
ganz Europa”, seeking out pictures in Italy, France and The Netherlands to purchase (Köhne, “Berlin, Moskau, St. Petersburg, 1649
bis 1763. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der freundschaftlichen Beziehungen zwischen Brandenburg-Preußen und Rußland”, Schriften
des Vereins für die Geschichte der Stadt Berlin, Berlin, XX, 1882, p. 145, echoing Gotzkowsky’s own words in his autobiographical
Geschichte, op. cit., I, p. 20).
5. Whilst in the Hermitage:
In the succinct, printed Notice sur les principaux tableaux du Musée Impérial de l’Ermitage à Saint-Pétersbourg of 1828, the
picture may feature again in the list of works by Rembrandt in room no. 11, described as “un rabbin juif qui se résigne à payer”
(see Literature). Room 11, one of the more spacious rooms in early-nineteenth-century plans of the Winter Palace, was hung with
39 works by (or thought to be by) Rembrandt, and was also Catherine’s billiard room, containing a table for the game, another
for a “jeu de fortune” and an impressive, mechanised writing desk by Catherine’s legendary ébéniste, Heinrich Gambs As well as
Flinck’s An old man at a casement, these 39 works included Rembrandt’s The Return of the Prodigal Son, the Flora of 1634, the
Portrait of an Old Woman of 1654, Haman recognising his fate, Danae (all still Saint Petersburg, State Hermitage Museum), The
Incredulity of Thomas, Ahasuerus and Haman at the feast of Esther (both now Moscow, State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts), A Man
in Oriental Costume and Joseph Accused by Potiphar’s Wife (the latter now doubted as being by Rembrandt; both in Washington,
D.C., National Gallery of Art). At least four of these (The Incredulity, The feast of Esther, Man in Oriental Costume and Joseph and
Potiphar’s Wife), in addition to the present work and various portraits, had come from Gotzkowski. The room soon came to be
called the “Salle de Rembrandt”, and by dint of Catherine’s astute and well-advised purchases, presented the richest concentration
of the work of Rembrandt and his school anywhere in the world in its day. Given that for many decades (indeed, often well into
the twentieth century), the best works of Rembrandt’s pupils were regularly catalogued as being by their master, it is no surprise that
the present work by Govaert Flinck was counted amongst the more than fifty works in the Imperial Collection given to Rembrandt
in its first decades. By 1838, 41 were accepted as being by Rembrandt, while 16 had been reclassified as school pictures. It seems
highly likely, given the cataloguing of the present work as Rembrandt, “Extra fein gemahlt”, in Gotzkowsky’s list, that the signature
and date were obscured by discoloured or degraded varnish or overpainting, which may also explain why the 1797 inventory
number, brushed in red paint in the lower left-hand corner, was placed so close to the then-hidden location of the signature. The
absence of any reference to the signature in Bode’s 1928 certificate - where he describes the picture as an early work, in ignorance
of the exact date indicated in the signature - suggests that the signature was not revealed until after 1928, but by the time of the
1932 exhibition. Interestingly, one other picture sold by Gotzkowsky to Catherine, the Man in Oriental Costume in Washington,
is now hypothetically attributed to Flinck, or may represent a collaboration between Flinck and Rembrandt, pupil and teacher. For
Gotzkowsky to have deliberately presented his Flincks as Rembrandts seems unlikely, as he had known to correctly attribute a large
subject picture by Flinck, The Repudiation of Hagar, which was not amongst those that went to Russia (Staatliche Museen Berlin,
Gemäldegalerie, inv. no. GG 815). It seems that he too formed his opinion in attributing it to Rembrandt on the basis of the present
work’s excellent, virtuosic execution and the apparent absence of a signature.
6. Later provenance:
The exact way in which An old man at a casement left the Hermitage is difficult to establish. Franck and Schepkowski (2002 and 2009
respectively), follow Gotzkowsky’s descendant and biographer, Professor Bodo Gotzkowsky, in suggesting that the present work may
have been amongst the 201 pictures sent to Moscow by Emperor Alexander II, Catherine’s great-grandson, in 1862, as a gift to the
newly founded Moscow Public and Rumyantsev Museums, the first major public art collection in the “throne capital” of Russia. With
The Appearance of Christ Before the People (1837-1857), the magnum opus of the leading Russian history painter Alexander Ivanov,
also given by the Tsar, the 201 Hermitage works were intended to be the founding nucleus of a picture gallery in the newly-established
Moscow museum in Pashkov House, the object of great local and national excitement. This generous donation, reported in the
newspaper Moskovskie vedomosti (1861, no. 168, p. 1379; no. 177, p. 1421), set the example for further contributions from imperial,
noble and private collections; it included at least one major masterpiece from Catherine’s Room 11, Rembrandt’s Feast of Esther, (the
Hinlopen picture acquired by Gotzkowsky), and, according to Bodo Gotzkowsky (see Frank, op. cit., p. 182), at least one other work
from the Gotzkowsky purchase, an Adoration of the Shepherds by Jacopo Bassano (untraced). The selection is said to have been made
by the celebrated Dr. Waagen, who had visited the Hermitage in 1861, compiling his own catalogue of the collection which was to be
published in 1864. It is not clear whether one of the pictures listed by Waagen as Rembrandt in that work, “Ein männliches Portrait mit
Schnautz- und Kinnbart, einer braunen Mütze und purpurrothem Mantel. Brustbild mit dunklem Grunde”, could be understood to be
the present work, still to be seen by him at the Hermitage in 1861; the dimensions are very plausible at 16 x 13¾ vershki, 71.2 x 61
cm. (G.F. Waagen, Die Gemldesammlung in der kaiserlichen Ermitage zu St. Petersburg..., Munich, 1864, p. 182, no. 821.
Alternatively, and perhaps more plausibly, An old man at a casement may have been amongst the works sold by Catherine’s grandson,
Emperor Nicholas I, in an auction at Prevost in St. Petersburg of Hermitage pictures on 6 th June 1854. We are grateful to Victor
Mikhailovich Faybisovich and Mikhail Olegovich Didinkin of the State Hermitage Museum for suggesting that it may have been lot
636 in that sale, as “Flinck. Head of an old man”, albeit catalogued with incorrect dimensions and citing the wrong number from the
1797 catalogue (3121). No copies of the auction catalogue are documented, but a Russian-language transcription (perhaps translated
from French) was published by a later Curator of Paintings, Baron N.W. Wrangell, in 1913. The vast sale, 1,218 lots in length, seems
to have been catalogued very hastily, and inaccuracies of attribution and description abound. In his commentary to the transcription,
Wrangell vociferously laments the sale, through which some significant masterpieces left the Hermitage collections. All of these
pictures remained in Russia and were purchased or otherwise returned to the Hermitage either before or after the Revolution. These
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included Lucas van Leyden’s supremely rare Shield-Bearers (subsequently reacquired for the Hermitage at great expense, in 1885),
Pieter Lastman’s The Flight of Abraham, Natoire’s Cupid and one of Catherine’s most beloved paintings, Chardin’s Still Life with
Attributes of the Arts. The 1854 auction seems to have been brought about by a variety of factors, including lack of space for proper
storage of the enormous collections; the dank condition of some of the existing Hermitage stores, which posed a risk to the safe
conservation of the vast numbers of paintings accumulated by Catherine; pressures to raise money in the years of Russia’s entanglement
in the Crimean War (1853-1856); the personal interest taken by Nicholas I in the maintenance of the collection; and the example of
similar deaccessional auctions held by museums in Continental Europe, such as that organized by the Pinakothek in Munich only two
years earlier, in 1852. At the Hermitage, a committee of experts selected some 1,500 works for auction, of which Nicholas I vetoed
almost 300, while the remaining 1,218 were entrusted to the commissaire Prevot in Saint Petersburg. In his magisterial history of the
Hermitage (which begins with the Gotzkowsky purchase in 1764), Vladimir F. Levinson-Lessing, another Curator in the lineage of
Köhne and Wrangell, notes that the decision to deaccession such important works may have been inadvertently caused by the “dulled
attentiveness” of the committee, tasked with reviewing thousands of the museum’s pictures in a short space of time (1764-1917) The
History of the Picture Gallery of the Hermitage (1764-1917)], Leningrad, 1985, pp. 183-4.
If An old man at a casement did enter the Rumyantsev Museum in Moscow, it may be the picture listed vaguely as a Portrait of
an old man by Rembrandt in nineteenth-century guidebooks to the collection, but a definitive identification has thus far proven
impossible. The museum itself was dissolved following the Russian Revolution, and while some pictures, like The Feast of Esther,
were sent to its successor, the State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow, others were dispersed or sold by the state (in a
process described by Tatiana N. Ignatovich, [Paintings of the Rumyantsev Museum in public collections of paintings in Russia and
neighbouring states], Moscow, 2009, pp. 41-3 and 318ff). The style of the monogrammed seal on the panel reverse, however,
applied multiple times as though in an assertive show of ownership, suggests that the picture may already have entered a private
collection by circa 1860-1870. The monogram, which can be read either as the Latin initials “XJ” or the Cyrillic initials “XX” [“G.
Kh.”], has not been conclusively identified. It is possible that already by the time of the Russian Revolution the present picture
had been acquired by the ancestors of the present owner. Wilhelm Friedrich Mertens, of Saint Petersburg, is known to have been
a passionate collector of Dutch Old Master drawings and pictures, and the present picture may have been amongst his purchases.
The Mertens family, which was of German origin, had established the fur trade in Russia in the mid 19 th century. The business had a
headquarters in Saint Petersburg, and branch offices in Nizhny Novgorod, Riga, Paris, London, Brussels, Leipzig and Berlin. In Saint
Petersburg their offices were on the Nevsky Prospect, with a shop at no. 50 in the 1850s, and subsequently with a grander building,
the F.L. Mertens Trade House, at no. 21, raised to four stories by A. Roben and subsequently completely rebuilt by the architect M.S.
Lyalevich in 1911-1912. Lyalevich also built a family house on Kamenny Island (1, Zapadnaya Alley) in 1911. Wilhelm Friedrich
left Saint Petersburg with his family and possessions in 1917-1918 and settled back in Germany.
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No. 8 Sebastiano Ricci
See Annalisa Scarpa, Sebastiano Ricci, Milan 2006, cats. 241-247, figs. 617-623.
See op. cit., cat.108, fig.299.
No. 9 Donato Creti
See exhibition review, Jeffrey Collins, in Eighteenth-Century Studies, vol.32, no.4, Summer 1999, pp.571.
See Renato Roli, Donato Creti, Milan 1967, p.88, cat.29 and fig. 53.
See, exhibition catalogue, Donato Creti, Melancholy and Perfection, New York and Los Angeles, 1989, p.58 and under notes,
reference to Zanotti, vol.II, p.113.
See Roli, op. cit., p.92, cat.54 and illustrated fig.56 (collection Isolani Lupari).
F. Sacchi, Notizie pittoriche cremonesi, Cremona 1872.
A further version, slightly smaller than the present one and without the column, was exhibited at Maastricht in 2012 by the present
gallery, and a drawing, previously attributed to Cantarini is in the Cini Foundation, Venice (see Renato Roli, op. cit., p.38 and
exhibition catalogue, op. cit., p.58).
No. 10 Giambattista Pittoni
Franca Zava Boccazzi, Pittoni, Venice 1979, pp.182 and 155, cats. 249 and 164, figs. 37 and 38.
See op. cit., 1979, p.111, cat.2, fig.125.
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No. 11 Attributed to Francesco Guardi
See, Luigina Rossi Bortolatto, L’opera completa di Francesco Guardi, Milan 1974, cats. 60-67 and exhibition catalogue, Alberto
Craievich and Filippo Pedrocco, Francesco Guardi, Venice, Museo Correr, 2012, cats. 7 and 8.
See G. M. Pilo, “Il gioco delle parti nei quadri turcheschi dei Guardi”, in I Guardi: Vedute, capricci, feste, disegni e “quadri
tercheschi”, exhibition catalogue, A. Bettagno, ed., Venice 2002, p.22 and see sale, New York, Sotheby’s, “The Courts of Europe”,
30 th January 2014, as Francesco Guardi after Gian Antonio Guardi’s design.
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No. 12 François Boucher
André Michel, François Boucher, Paris, J.Rouam, 1886, p.96 “en robe de chambre et bonnet de coton, à la Chardin, assis devant
sa toile, dans tout le feu du travail, plein de vie au milieu de son atelier encombré d’un amusant fouillis, entre sa femme qui, un
enfant dans les bras, regarde par-dessus son épaule, et deux jeunes garçons dont l’un broie des couleurs, l’autre tient un cartable”.
See L’œuvre dessiné de François Boucher, Paris 1966, cat.545, p.151 and fig.102, Study: Head of a Child and Two Hands, Black,
red and white chalk (trois crayons), 215 x 150 mm.
See exhibiton catalogue, op.cit., under Literature, 1986-7, cat.21 and fig.105.
Los Angeles County Art Museum, inv. 59.37.1, red chalk heightened with white, 362 x 267mm.
Le Berger Napolitain, now lost but known from an engraving by Daullé made when it was in the collection of the chevalier de
Damery.
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No. 13 Hubert Robert
For Robert’s life after his release from Saint-Lazaire cf., P. de Nolhac, Hubert Robert, Paris, 1910, pp. 78-89 & J. de Cayeux, Hubert
Robert, Paris, 1989, pp. 295-316.
P. de Nolhac, op. cit., pp. 80-82.
Robert’s transformation of this motif is discussed by C. Boulot & J.-P. Cuzin, in J.H. Fragonard e H. Robert a Roma, exhibition
catalogue, Rome (Villa Medici), 1990, p. 101.
ibid., no. 49, p. 100, colour pl. XII on p. 124. For Fischer von Erlach’s reconstruction of the pyramids which were also to influence
Étienne-Louis Boulée cf., R. Middleton & D. Watkin, Neoclassical and 19 th Century Architecture, Milan, 1980, I, p. 66, fig. 74.
Illustrated in Hubert Robert et Saint-Pétersbourg, exhibition catalogue, Valence, 1999, no. 31, p.154.
N. Turner, European Master Drawings from Portuguese Collections, exhibition catalogue, Lisbon, 2000, no. 99, pp. 220-21 and
Sotheby’s London, 8 th July 1998, lot 72.
P. de Nolhac, op. cit., p. 82. The first of the paintings, Captivitas, captivitatis et omnia captivitas, is illustrated between pp. 80 & 81,
while the second, Carcere tandem aperto, is found between pp. 82 & 83.
ibid., p. 87.
From a letter of 11 th March 1806, quoted by J. de Cayeux (op. cit., p. 303), to Pierre-Adrien Pâris who had been Louis XVI’s architect.
A version of the present picture without the female staffage in the middle distance was on the Parisian art market in the mid-1950s.
Sale, Paris, Galerie Charpentier, 5 th December 1955, Lot 46, 53 x 64 cm.
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No. 14 Francesco Guardi
James Byam Shaw, “Some Venetian Draughtsmen of the Eighteenth Century”, Old Master Drawings, March 1933, p.53; reprinted
in J.B.S Selected Writings, Colnaghi London, 1968, pp.74-75.
See Alessandro Bettagno, Francesco Guardi, Vedute Capricci Feste, exhibition catalogue, Venice, Fondazione Cini, 1993, pp.144-145.
See exhibition catalogue, op. cit., 1993, cat. 50
See exhibition catalogue, Alberto Craievich and Filippo Pedrocco, Francesco Guardi, 1712-1793, Venice, Museo Correr, 2012-2013,
see cats.59 and 60.
See Antonio Morassi, Guardi, Venice 1973, cats. 865 and 863, figs.799 and 780. See also Christie’s, London, 3 th July 2012, lot 56.
See exhibition catalogue, op. cit., 2012-13, p.273, cat.100.
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No. 15 Heinrich Fuseli
See painting in the collection of Richard J. Carrott, California, according to the exhibition catalogue, London, Tate Gallery, Henry
Fuseli, 1975, cat.20, p.58.
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No. 16 Felice Giani
Anna Ottani Cavina, email dated 10 th november 2013
Anna Ottani Cavina, Felice Giani e la cultura di fine secolo, Electa, Milan, 1999, vol.2, p.637.
Ibid., p.671, no. D68; private collection, Venice.
No. 18 Filippo Palizzi
See Usi e costumi di Napoli e dintorni, Naples, vol. I and II, 1857.
See Paolo Ricci, I Fratelli Palizzi, Milan 1960, pl. III, “Corricolo Napoletano” in the Galleria d’arte moderna, Rome. See also the
website of the Galleria nazionale d’arte moderna under the title “Antico corridoio napoletano (Cava).
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No. 19 Eugenio Cecconi
Giampaolo Daddi, Eugenio Cecconi, Stefanoni ed., Lecco 1973, p.228, plate 153, as location unknown.
No. 20 Carolus-Duran
Carolus-Duran 1837-1917, Palais des Beaux-Arts Lille and Toulouse, Musée des Augustins, June-September 2003.
Review of the exhibition by William Hauptman, published on the website Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide, a journal of
nineteenth century visual culture.
See H. B. Weinberg, The Lure of Paris, Nineteenth Century American Painters and their French Teachers, Abbeville Press 1990.
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No. 21 Antonio Mancini
Guido Guida, Antonio Mancini. Il maestro del colore, Roma 1921, p.31.
No. 22 Giovanni Boldini
See Literature, Panconi, p.216.
See Literature, ibid., p.226.
See Jean-Luc Baroni Ltd., Master Drawings and Paintings, 2008, cat.46 and fig.1.
No. 23 Federico Zandomeneghi
F. Dini, Federico Zandomeneghi: la vita e le opere, edizioni Il Torchio, Firenze, 1989, no. 71, p. 415, ill. col. tav. XXXI.
F. Dini, ibid., no. 181, p. 442, ill. col. tav. LXXIX.
E. Piceni, Zandomeneghi, Bramante editrice, Milano 1967, no. 693.
F. Dini, op.cit., p. 545: “Avete ragione di dire che in Italia la cosidetta natura morta è considerata come una frivolezza, e anche
questa stupidità la dobbiamo all’influenza presuntuosa germanica che da molti anni si è infiltrata nello spirito e nelle tradizioni
pagane della nostra razza. Qui almeno i Courbet i Delacroix e il prodigioso Manet e cento altri ci lasciarono modelli imperituri di
superbe nature morte”.
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1.
No. 24 Edouard Vuillard
See Catalogue raisonné, Antoine Salomon et Guy Cogeval, Vuillard, Le Regard innombrable, Catalogue critique des peintures et
pastels, vol. I, cat. nos: IV–18, IV-16, IV-48, IV-51 and IV-87.
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No. 25 Giovanni Boldini
Tiziano Panconi, Giovanni Boldini l’opera completa, Florence 2002, p. 216.
No. 26 Otto Friedrich
Thieme Becker, op. cit., see Literature.
Leon Trotsky, op. cit., see Literature.
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No. 28 Jacques-Edme Dumont
As G. Vattier would qualify himself in a letter addressed on behalf of Auguste Dumont to the National museum’s director, Mr. Saglio,
dated 12 th April 1886 (AMN S30 Dumont Auguste-Alexandre): ”C’est au nom de la famille de l’illustre statuaire et au mien aussi,
comme son exécuteur testamentaire et son historien que je me permets de vous adresser cette requête”.
G. Vattier published two versions of his book about the Dumonts’ family : G. Vattier, Augustin Dumont, Notes sur sa famille, sa vie et ses
ouvrages, Paris, H. Oudin, Librairie Editeur, 1885; Une famille d’artistes, Les Dumont 1660-1884, Paris, 1890, Librairie Ch. Delagrave.
“Les sujets de plusieurs esquisses en terre cuite nous sont connus par l’importante présentation qui en fut faite lors de l’exposition
centennale de l’art français“, in Nouvelles acquisitions du département des sculptures, 1988-1991, RMN, p. 96
MC/ET/X
Brevet de pensionnaire du roi à l’Académie de France à Rome en date du.
G. Vattier, 1890, p.4: “et je suis actuellement avec des maîtres qui, quoique ne parlant pas, me disent beaucoup plus que ceux qui
parlent, ceux sont les antiques.”
Stanislas Lamy, Dictionnaire des sculpteurs de l’école Française, 1910, vol. I, p. 303: “Cléopâtre. Petite réduction en marbre d’après
l’antique, Rome, année 1789.”; G. Vattier, 1890, p. 71: “il recouvra plus tard ses portefeuilles de dessins et tous ses ouvrages, parmi
lesquels l’ébauche réduite en marbre de la figure antique connue autrefois sous le nom de Cléopâtre et désignée actuellement
sous celui d’Ariane.”
J.E. Dumont, Général Marceau, 35 x 14 cm, terracotta, 1804, RF 2707
La revue des arts, III, septembre 195: deux maquettes de Jacques-Edme Dumont, pp. 181-183: “Les sculpteurs n’eurent guère l’occasion
de réaliser des œuvres définitives pendant la Révolution et le Consulat: l’époque ne s’y prêtait pas. Seules de rares maquettes
rappellent le souvenir de monuments éphémères.”
A. L. Girodet de Roucy de Trioson, Junon and Juturne, 132 x 131 mm, black chalk, RF 34760
Lamy, 1910, p. 303: “La Vierge et l’enfant Jésus. Groupe en plâtre (année 1785).”
Lamy, 1910, p. 303: “Deux petites figures, l’une tenant un vase, l’autre une cuvette. Terre-cuite. Salon de 1795. Exposées de nouveau
au salon de l’Elysée de 1797.”
Garland, Dictionnaire général des artistes de l’école française, New York & London, 1979, vol. II, p. 478: Une femme sortant du
bain se pressant les cheveux.
Lamy, 1910, p. 303 : “Femme sortant du bain. Statuette en plâtre. Salon de 1796.”
Vente Objet d’art et bel ameublement, 24 avril 1989, hôtel Drouot, Paris, expert de Bayser pour les dessins et les terres cuites, étude
Hervé, Chayette, Laurence, Calmels
François Souchal, “Délectation de l’amateur. Morceaux de salons …” in Histoire d’un art, La Sculpture, Grande Tradition de la
sculpture du XVe au XVIIIe siècle, Le Rococo, Genève, 1987, Skira, pp. 272
Léon Ginain, architect of Notre-Dame-des Champs (Paris VI) or the Galliera Museum (Paris IX), he won the Rome Prize in 1875
and became a member of the Institute in 1881. As mentioned with regard to the model Hebe and Jupiter in the Louvre collections:
“Collection de Paul-René-Léon Ginain (1825-1898) puis de sa femme, veuve en première noce d’Auguste Dumont. Exposition
centennale de 1900. Collection du Docteur Cayeux, 1977.”
”C’est un souvenir de mon enfance: je vois encore, rue de Bagneux, papa Mont, comme on l’appelait familièrement, assis dans son
fauteuil, un bonnet de coton enfoncé jusqu’aux sourcils ( …) tenant entre le pouce et l’index un bouchon lui servant de selle sur lequel il
modelait des figurines auxquelles il ne manquait aucun détail, et haute pour la plupart de cinq à six centimètres˝. See G. Vattier, op. cit.
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No. 29 Fra Bartolomeo
See Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, Trans. Gaston du C. de Vere, Everyman 1996, vol. I, p.670
See Vasari, op. cit., p.672.
Leonardo began the cartoon for the Battle of Anghiari in 1503 and in 1504 Michelangelo started work on designs for the Battle of
Cascina and completed the marble David.
See Chris Fischer, Fra Bartolommeo, Master Draughtsman of the High Renaissance, Rotterdam, 1990, p. 107.
The Gran Consiglio was abolished by the Medici on their return to power in 1512 and the altarpiece was left unfinished but during
the brief revival of the Republic between 1527 and 1530, it was paraded about the city and installed in the great chamber as a
symbol against oppression.
This famous commission was carried out by Titian who did, however, base his design upon Fra Bartolommeo’s drawings. (see Chris
Fischer, op. cit., p.293.)
For the provenance of the copy after this drawing see sales, London, Christie’s, Robert Prioleau Roupell esq., 5 th day, 12 th July
1887, lot 719, Fra Bartolommeo, Head of a Monk; then, A valuable collection of drawings by old masters formed by a well-known
amateur during the last forty years (British Museum copy of this catalogue annotated Sir J. C Robinson), Christie’s, 12 th May 1902,
lot 17 Fra Bartolommeo, Portrait of the Artist black chalk from the Roupell Collection.
For misidentifications of Savanarola, see also a drawing with a 19 th century inscription: Le Fameux Savonarole/Original dessiné par
son ami Fra Bartholomeo de San Marco, in the Lugt Foundation, Paris, see James Byam Shaw, The Italian Drawings of the Frits Lugt
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Collection, vol I, Paris, 1983, cat.17 and vol. II, pl.17. And for Fra Bartolommeo’s painted portrait of Savanarola, circa 1498, see the
Museo di San Marco, Florence. www.wga.hu/html/b/bartolom/fra/savonaro.htm
See Chris Fischer, Fra Bartolommeo Master Draughtsman of the High Renaissance, A Selection from the Rotterdam Albums and
Landscape Drawings from various collections, Rotterdam 1990, p.9.
See Jean-Luc Baroni Ltd., Master Drawings, London 2011, cat.1.
See Chris Fischer, op. cit., cat. 64.
See Chris Fischer, op. cit., cats. 88 and 89.
See Chris Fischer, op. cit., cat.78.
See Chris Fischer, op. cit. cats. 40,42. 43.
See Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, translated by Gaston de Vere, Everyman Library, 1996, pp.674 and 716.
See Carol Plazzotta and Hugo Chapman, in Raphael from Urbino to Rome, London 2004, pp.231 and 240 and 242. And for a
demonstration of the close artistic links between Leonardo, Fra Bartolommeo and Raphael, see the Frate’s studies for the St. George
and the Dragon (Chris Fischer, op. cit., cats. 45-48), for which he took inspiration from Leonardo’s Adoration of the Magi and other
studies of horseman as indeed did Raphael for his own version of St. George which is now in the National Gallery of Washington.
It has not been possible to trace the earlier provenance but from Passavant’s reports we know that Lawrence bought the drawing
from the Woodburns “aus den Sammlungen Woodburn, Lawrence” (in other cases, he gives pre-Lawrence provenances such as
Logoy, Dimsdale, Wicar, or Ottley).
No. 30 Italian School, 16 Th Century
Inv.1860-6-16-111, pen and brown ink on paper, 278 x412mm.
Inv.12815, pen and brown ink on paper, 292 x 423mm., inscribed: Manca u corda di gobba.
See exhibition catalogue, Pisanello, Le Peintre aux sept vertus, Paris, Musée du Louvre 1996, cat.218.
While a horse seen from the back in the same fresco has also been said to be taken from a drawing by Pisanello there are some
differences in the pose and therefore the source may not in fact be that.
Other camels appear in Pinturicchio’s work, such as the pair in the background of one of the Sistine Chapel frescoes illustrating the Journey
of Moses. In contrast, those are distinctly inaccurate as zoological examples having straight foreheads, pointed noses and deer-like ears.
See Caroline Campbell and Alan Chong, Bellini and the East, London and Boston 2005, cat.23 and cats.24-30.
See exhibition catalogue, loc. cit., cat.2.
In another case of borrowing, Durer took three figures from the oriental section of the Procession in a drawing now in the British
Museum dated 1514 (see Julian Raby, Picturing the Levant, 1991, p.79).
Email correspondence dated 7 th December 2012, “Our expert has offered the following information “The penis of a camel is
covered by a triangular sheath, from which it emerges. This could be an enlarged sheath depicted here (or it may not) and it may in
fact be the reason the camel was thought notable for illustration. There are several changes that happen to male camels during the
rut, though I am not saying that an enlargement of the sheath is one of them. That’s as much as I can offer I’m afraid. It may be worth
the enquirer contacting a zoo or even going as far as making enquiries of camel dealers in those countries where they are traded.”
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No. 31 Aurelio Luini
See sale, New York, Sotheby’s, 23 th January 2008, lot 3 and a Standing Figure of a Saint, in the Ambrosiana, inscribed: Aurelio
Luvino pi.re. (see G. Bora, Disegni de Manieristi Lombardi, Vicenza 1971, p.57, no.94, reproduced fig.94).
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6.
No. 32 Alessandro Allori
See Simona Lecchini, Alessandro Allori, Turin 1991, fig.216, cat.97.
See A. Venturi, “Storia dell’Arte Italiana” vol.IX, “La Pittura del Cinquecento”, part IX, Milan 1933, p.111, fig.70.
See Simona Lecchini, op. cit., 1991, cat.152, figs. 357 and 356 respectively.
See Nicholas Turner, Florentine Drawings of the sixteenth century, London 1986, cat.155, illustrated p.207.
See Lecchini, op. cit., 1991, fig.140, fig. 254, fig.317, figs.284 and 281, figs. 346-350 and fig.381
See Lecchini, op. cit., cat.171, fig.402.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
No. 33 Jacob Matham
Inventaire des dessins et aquarelles donnés à l’état Belge par Madame la douairière de Grez, Brussels, 1913, no.2428; Brussels, Palais
des Beaux-Arts and Rome, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Fiamminghi a Roma 1508-1608: Artistes de Pays-Bas et de la principauté
de Liège à Rome à la Renaissance, exhibition catalogue, 1995, pp.251-252, no.134. The drawing measures 195 x 150 mm., and
is signed and dated Matham F / Roma / 95.
Anonymous sale, Amsterdam, Sotheby Mak van Waay, 2 nd November 1987, lot 24; Anonymous sale, Amsterdam, Sotheby’s, 13 th
November 1991, lot 333; Léna Widerkehr, “Jacob Matham Goltzij Privignus: Jacob Matham graveur et ses rapports avec Hendrick
Goltzius”, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek, 1991-1992, p.245, fig.158, where dated c.1603.
Marijn Schapelhouman, Nederlandse tekeningen omstreeks 1600 / Netherlandish Drawings circa 1600, ‘s-Gravenhage, 1987,
pp.90-91, no.55, illustrated in colour p. xviii.
A useful summary of Matham’s activity in Italy is found in Léna Widerkehr, “Jacob Matham and the Diffusion of Recent Developments
in Roman Art in Northern Europe”, in Eiche, van der Sman and van Waadenoijen, eds., op.cit., pp.93-109.
See Literature, Röttgen, pp.41-42. In publishing the present sheet, Röttgen attributed it to Joseph Heintz the Elder (1564-1609), an
attribution that has since been rejected by Jürgen Zimmer.
1.
2.
3.
No. 34 Roelandt Savery
J. Spicer “The naer het leven Peasant Studies, by Pieter Bruegel or Roelandt Savery?”, Master Drawings, 1970, Vol. I, pp.3-30.
Hollstein, Dutch and Flemish etchings, engravings and woodcuts ca. 1450-1700, vol. XXIII, p.222, no.3.
Photo Witt Library.
164

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2.
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4.
5.
6.
No. 35 Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, called Il Guercino
For these references see Luigi Salerno, I Dipinti del Guercino, Rome, 1988, p.266, no.183.
See Sir Denis Mahon, Guercino. Catalogo critico dei disegni, Bologna 1969, no.143 and Denis Mahon and David Ekserdjian,
”Guercino Drawings from the Collections of Denis Mahon and the Ashmolean Museum”, The Burlington Magazine, March 1986
(supplement), no.28; Renato Roli, Guercino, Disegni, Bologna 1972, pl.56; Sir Denis Mahon and Nicolas Turner, Guercino:
Drawings from Windsor Castle, London and New Haven 1991, cat.634.
No. 36 Pietro da Cortona
See Jörg Martin Merz, Pietro da Cortona and Roman Baroque Architecture, New Haven and London, 2008, p.9 and p.241.
See G. Briganti, Pietro da Cortona, 1982, p.197
Bénédicte Gady, Pietro da Cortona, Musée du Louvre, Paris 2011, cats. 11 and 13.
See G. Briganti, op.cit., cat.53, pl.287.
See Felice Stampfle and Jacob Bean, exhibition catalogue, Drawings from New York Collections, The Seventeenth Century, New
York, 1967, cat.59.
See Nicolas Turner, Italian Baroque Drawings, London 1980, cat.13.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
No. 37 Carlo Maratta
The church was dedicated to St. Carlo Borromeo; the word Catinari refers to the fact that the surrounding area was full of workshops
producing dishes and basins.
As recorded in a letter written by the French traveller Charles de Brosses, Lettres familières sur l’Italie of 1739-40.
Anthony Blunt and Hereward Lester Cooke, The Roman Drawings of the XVII and XVIII Centuries in the Collection of Her Majesty
the Queen at Windsor Castle, London, p.54, cat.264, pl.59.
Giovan Pietro Bellori, (1613-1696), The Lives of the Modern Painters, Sculptors and Archtiects, A New Translation and Critical
Edition, Alice Sedgwick Wohl and Hellmut Wohl, 2005, p.414-415.
The commission was given to Maratta by Cardinal Portcarrero who wished to present to Charles II, King of Spain, with depictions
of the Four Seasons.
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2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
1.
2.
No. 38 Benedetto Luti
Rodolfo Maffeis, Benedetto Luti, l’ultimo maestro, Università degli Studi di Firenze, Mandragora Ed., Florence 2012, p.201
Edgar Peters Bowron, preface to Rodolfo Maffeis, op.cit., p.8
Edgar Peters Bowron, The Paintings of Benedetto Luti (1666-1724), Ph.D. Dissertation, New York, New York University, Institute of
Fine Arts, 1979.
Rodolfo Maffeis, op.cit., p.5.
Neil Jeffares, Dictionary of pastellists before 1800, online edition, www.pastellists.com Benedetto Luti.
Rodolfo Maffeis, op.cot., p. 322, no. III.9, illustrated.
Ibid., p. 342, no. IV.23, illustrated p.343
Ibid., p.321, no. III.8, illustrated.
Ibid., p.322, under no. III.9
Ibid., p. 343, under no. IV.23. This copy with a pair of wings added at the base of the boy’s neck.
No. 40 Giovanni Paolo Pannini
See Ferdinando Arisi, Gian Paolo Panini e I fasti della Roma dell ’700, Rome 1986, cat. and fig.496.
See Arisi, 1986, op. cit., cat.493.
1.
2.
3.
4.
No. 41 Giambattista Tiepolo
G. Knox, Tiepolo, A Bicentenary Exhibition, exhib. cat., Cambridge, Mass., Fogg Art Museum, 1970, no. 94, reproduced and on
the cover.
See exhibition catalogue, Bernard Aikema, Tiepolo and his Circle, Drawings in American Collections, Pierpont Morgan Library, New
York, 1997, cat.110, p.294.
loc. cit.
A. Morassi, A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings of G.B. Tiepolo, London 1962, p. 17, reproduced fig. 59
1.
No. 42 Jan Van Huysum
1. F.P. Seguier, Dictionary, 1870∆∞ªbv.
1.
2.
3.
4.
No. 43 Pietro Gonzaga
See, exhibition catalogue, Venice, Cini Foundation, Scenografie di Pietro Gonzaga, 1967, cat.96. Recent publications are: Dvortsy,
ruiny, temnicy, Giovanni Battista Piranesi i ital’janskye architectyrnye fantazii XVIII veka (Palaces, Ruins and prisons. Giovanni Battista
Piranesi and the Italian architectural fantasies of the XVIII century). Exhibition catalogue, State Hermitage. Leningrad, 1980. cat. no
2, p. 22; Myzyka v Ermitazhnom teatre. 1786-1796 (Music in the Hermitage Theatre), exhibition catalogue, State Hermitage, St.
Petersburg, 2006. cat. no 9, p. 18; Pietro Gonzaga., Exhibition catalogue, State Hermitage), St. Petersburg, 2011. cat. no 89, p. 342.
See exhibition cat. op. cit., cat.68
Another study of the vestibule, without the figures, was sold London, Christie’s, 10 th December 2004, lot 355 (Black chalk, pen and
brown ink and wash, 212 x 278mm).
Sale London, Christie’s, 10 th december 2004, lot 355 ((black chalk, pen and brown ink and wash, 212 x 278 mm).
165

1.
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3.
4.
No. 44 Pelagio Palagi
See F. Leone, L’officina neoclassica: anelito alla sintesi, ricerca dell’archetipo, in L’officina neoclassica. Dall’Accademia de’ Pensieri
all’Accademia d’Italia, exhibition catalogue, Faenza, F. Leone and F. Mazzocca, Milan 2009, pp.18-53.
See letter to Palagi from Aldovrandi, 26 th February 1808; Bologna, Biblioteca dell’Archiginnasio, Coll. Autografi, vol.II, no.404.
Referred to again in C.Poppi, Sperimentazione e metodo nei disegni di Pelagio Palagi, in L’ombra di Core. Disegni dal fondo Palagi
della biblioteca dell’Archiginnasio, exhibition catalogue, Bologna 1988-1989.
Letter from Palagi to Rosaspina, 15 October 1806: Forli, Biblioteca Communale “A. Saffi”, Fondo Piancastelli, Carte Romagna
These projects included the 1813-14 frescoes for the Galleria di Teseo in the now destroyed Palazzo Torlonia in Piazza Venezia.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
1.
2.
3.
1.
2.
3.
4.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
No. 48 Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres
Letter written in 1807, see H. Lapauze, Le Roman d’amour de M. Ingres, Paris, 1910, pp.170-171.
See Hans Naef, Die Bildniszeichnungen von J.-A.-D. Ingres, vol. IV, Bern 1977, cat.337 and 348.
See exhibition catalogue, Portraits by Ingres, Image of an Epoch, London and New York, 1999-2000, cat.106.
See Hans Naef, op. cit., cat 363.
See exhibition catalogue, op. cit., 1999-2000, p.304.
Ibid., p.423, note.16.
See Hans Naef, “Ingres Portrait Drawings of English Sitters in Rome” The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 98, No. 645 (Dec., 1956),
p.427.
No. 49 Friedrich Nerly
See the Thorvaldsen Museum website: www.thorvaldsensmuseum.dk/en/collection/
Purchased from Sotheby’s New York, 24 th October 1986. See also Sale, Sotheby’s London, 6 th March 1974, lot 149; J. Finch; sale
Sotheby’s New York, 24 th October 1986, lot 12.
See, www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/Collection/art-object-page.139110.html
No. 50 Honoré-Victorin Daumier
See literature, Daumier 1808-1879, Ottawa and elsewhere, p. 447.
See literature, K.E. Maison, 1967, p. 11.
“Lawyers and the Courts”, in Daumier Drawings, exhib. cat., New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1992, p. 175).
See exhibition catalogue, London, Royal Academy of Arts, Daumier, Visions of Paris, 2013-2014, cat.75.
No. 51 Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas
See R. Gordon & A. Forge, op. cit., p. 223.
Ibid., pp. 259-260.
See George Shakelford, et al., Degas et le nu, exhibition catalogue, Paris and Boston 2012, cats.202, 203 and 207 and p. 211.
For the other connected drawings, see 2 nd sale, op. cit., lots 258, 292, 296, 316, 318, 320, 321; 3 rd sale 1919, 194, 327, 384; 4 th
sale 1919, 158, 266 A
Charcoal and brown pastel on tracing paper. Signed lower left. 788 x 368mm. (31 x 14 ½ in.), sale, Paris, Georges Petit, 6 th ,7 th ,8 th
May 1918, Tableaux, Pastels et Dessins par Edgar Degas et provenant de son atelier, 2 nd sale, lot 320 with measurements given
wrongly as 420 x 270mm.
1.
No. 52 Giovanni Boldini
Tiziano Panconi, Giovanni Boldini, l’opera completa, Florence 2002, p. 216.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
No. 53 Auguste Rodin
See René Benjamin, Les dessins d’Auguste Rodin, Salle des Fêtes du “Gil Blas”, Paris, 1910, in Claudie, Judrin, Tilman, Osterwold
et al., Auguste Rodin, Aquarelles de la collection du Musée Rodin, Städtische Galerie Ravensburg, 2004-5, p.9.
Julie Cladel, Rodin, sa vie glorieuse et inconnue, Grasset, Paris 1950, p.78 and cited in Albert Elsen and J. Kirk T. Varnedoe, The Drawings
of Rodin, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., 1971 and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1972, p.103, note 8.
Mario Meunier, ”Rodin dans son art et dans sa vie”, Les Marges, April 1914, pp.250-1, quoted in C. Judrin, T. Osterwold et al., op. cit., 2004, p.17.
Anthony Ludovici, Personal Reminiscences of August Rodin, J.B. Lippincott, Philadelphia, 1926, pp.138-9, quoted in Elsen and
Varnedoe, op. cit., 1971-2, p.85.
See Claudie Judrin, Musée Rodin, Inventaire des dessins, Paris 1984, cats.D4236 and D1530.
See Judrin, loc. cit., cats.5678 and 4636 and also exhibition catalogue, op. cit., under Exhibited, cat.167.
See also Antoinette le Normand-Romain and Christina Buley-Uribe, Auguste Rodin, Drawings & Watercolours, Editions Hazan,
2006, p.46-47 and pl.129.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
No. 55 Lucian Freud
See exhibition catalogue Lucian Freud Works on Paper, 1988, under selected exhibitions, p.126 and Sebastian Smee et al., Lucian
Freud On Paper, published New York, 2008, p.25.
See sale, London, Christie’s, 25 th June 2013, lot 29.
See, John Richardson, “Remembering Lucian Freud”, Lucian Freud Portraits, London 2012, pp.10 and 17.
See exhib. cat. op. cit., 1988, p.14
See Sebastian Smee in Lucian Freud on paper, New York 2008, p.5.
Sebastian Smee, “A Late Night Conversation with Lucian Freud”, Freud at Work, Editors, Bruce Bernard David Dawson, London 2006, p.18.
See exhib. cat., Lucian Freud Portraits, London 2012, p.230.
166

Index of Artists
Allori, Alessandro, no. 32
Assereto, Giuseppe, no. 6
Bison, Giuseppe-Bernardino, nos. 17, 45-47
Boldini, Giovanni, nos. 22, 25, 52
Boucher, François, no. 12
Cecconi, Eugenio, no. 19
Coello, Alonso Sànchez, no. 2
Cortona, Pietro da, no. 36
Creti, Donato, no. 9
Daumier, Honoré-Victorin, no. 50
Degas, Edgar, no. 51
Dumont, Jacques-Edme, no. 28
Duran, Carolus, no. 20
Flinck, Govaert, no. 7
Fra Bartolomeo, Baccio della Porta, no. 29
Freud, Lucian, no. 55
Friedrich, Otto, nos. 26-27
Füssli, Johann Heinrich, no. 15
Galizia, Fede and Nunzio, no. 3
Giani, Felice, no. 16
Gonzaga, Pietro, no. 43
Guardi, Francesco, nos. 11, 14
Guercino, Giovanni-Francesco Barbieri, no. 35
Huysum, Jan Van, no. 42
Ingres, Jean-Auguste-Dominique, no. 48
Italian school, 16th century, no. 30
Lhote, André, no. 54
Lippi, Lorenzo, no. 5
Luini, Aurelio, no. 31
Luti, Benedetto, nos. 38-39
Mancini, Antonio, no. 21
Maratta, Carlo, no. 37
Master of the Female Half-Lengths, no. 1
Matham, Jacob, no. 33
Nerly, Friedrich, no. 49
Palagi, Pelagio, no. 44
Palizzi, Filippo, no. 18
Pannini, Giovanni-Paolo, no. 40
Pittoni, Giambattista, no. 10
Reni, Guido, no. 4
Ricci, Sebastiano, no. 8
Robert, Hubert, no. 13
Rodin, Auguste, no. 53
Savery, Roelandt, no. 34
Tiepolo, Giambattista, no. 41
Vuillard, Edouard, no. 24
Zandomeneghi, Federico, no. 23
167

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